2000 Pan American High
Performance Coaching Course
February 10 – 15, 2009
Hamilton, Bermuda
Course Conductors: FIH Coach Grade 1 – ShiazVirjee (Canada)
FIH Coach
- William (Bill) Gaudette (USA), FIH Coach
Olympian - Jorgelina Rimoldi (Argentina)
Mental Skills
Building the Mental Skills
William F Gaudette 111 PhD
FIH Coach
Mental Skills
Why is it that so much talent comes into
our top level programs and often fails,
there are lots of ideas, but no studies
We commonly sit around the table and we
all have an opinion, staff has ideas, med
have input, management has ideas but
everything is very objective.
Off the back of function is the training
model, skills training revolves around this
area.
Mental Skills
Talent Entry and failures – Why?
Staff Opinions from table – objective
Back of function is my “training model”
Encompass skills training
Players must maximize potential – less objective
Player Potential is Dynamic – growth
Your “Mind Set” is a skill, learned
Mental Skills need to be in place to achieve
Excellence.
Test Physically, technically and Mentally
Mental Skills
Development self analysis, self
awareness
Debrief success and failure
Getting better? Self Improvement.
Force Debriefing and you’ll force
improvement
Your belief in yourself
Mental Skills
Mindsets – Fixed and Growth
Fixed Mindset – talented players
believe in their skills “LES”
Surrounded by supporters
Degrade other players
Self belief in talent
Embarrassed to be seen
Result – no growth effect
Mental Skills
Growth Mindset – proactive mentally
Challenges for development and
improvement
Top Achievers – limitless
Challenge to turn the fixed mindset
player
Mental Skills
Muhammad Ali
Great boxer
Big fists
Big chest
Great lung capacity
Fixed or Growth
Explored neighborhoods of opponents
Mental Skills
Michael Jordan
Knew he was great
2 hr practice daily
Self debriefing
Fixed or Growth
Mental Skills
Mental Skills
John McEnroe
Strong self believer
Doubles contender
Difficulties experienced – sore back,
over training, under training, over
weight, broadcaster caused excessive
stress.
Many players they don’t like
Mental Skills
Mental Skills
Tiger Woods
Reached peak at young age
Plateau
Changed swing
Fixed or Growth
Mental Skills
Mental Skills
Mental Toughness –ever hear a coach tell a player that
he needs to toughen up mentally?
4 C’s
Commitment – Staff must buy concept of Mental Training.
Player who have this stick to their plan, their goals
Control – emotions do not run wild, control life, Player
makes the decision, not his coach nor family or peers.
Challenge – fixed players see danger in a problem, they
are just fine where they are. Challenges are opportunity
to develop.
Confidence – worth while players
Mental Skills
Motivation Traits – Impact a players
development. Structure interview to
capture data. What motivates your player
and what language is most successful.
Reactive player or Proactive Player
Reactive – studies concept and executes
Proactive Player – specific language
motivates. Direct result by your words.
Requires key words, understanding of
player
Mental Skills
Keen on players maximizing potential.
Tired of sitting around the table.
The Potential of a Player is Dynamic – it
should not be the same in 6 months as it is
today.
Mind set is a skill – a skill that can be
developed.
Mental Skills need to be in place to achieve
excellence
Testing Physically and Technically, and
mentally?
Briefing and Debriefing
We need to develop a players self analysis,
our players self awareness.
Debrief success and failures, not only at
the end of the game, but at the end of
training sessions.
How are you going to get better, searching
to improve yourself. By forcing yourself to
debrief yourself you are forcing self
improvement
Belief – a belief is something from past
experience that you go by and believe in.
Mindsets
Fixed Mindset and Growth Mindset
Fixed Mindset: is commonly found in talented
players, they believe in their ability and believe in
their skills, that their skills are so good that this will
produce success. This often generates a “Low
Effort Syndrome” They are told by their peers,
family, press, all that surround them, how good
they are!! The Low Effort Syndrome player often
ignores other players or even may degrade
players who are lesser, but on an improvement
path for elite success. They believe that their
incredible talent is enough, not caring to show
others that they too need to improve sprinting and
conditioning, in learning new skills, etc.
Mental Skills
They are kind of embarrassed for others to see
that they may not be good enough. Some of the
better players don’t want to work at getting better,
they know they are already talented. This
eventually is the route to stagnation.
Growth Mindset – proactive mentally, see
problems as a place to learn for long term growth
and development. Although they know they are
talented, they also know they can get better
Top Achievers – many top achievers don’t believe
it when people say to them that they have limits.
Mental Skills
Opportunity – A fixed mindset player needs
to be turned into a growth mindset player.
Muhammad Ali – A great boxer, big fists,
big chest, great lung capacity. He knew he
was a great boxer, but he was a growth
mindset person. He even went to many of
the neighbors of his opponents to learn
more about them!!
Michael Jordan – he knew he was great,
but every day before school he spent 2
hours shooting hoops by himself,
debriefing himself every day.
Mental Skills
John McEnroe – A fixed mindset, believed that if
his talent was not good enough he was not going
to play so when he lost a key doubles match, he
stopped playing doubles for over 15 years. He
always had an excuse for losing, sore back, over
trained, under trained, over weight, broadcasters
cause too much stress. You can see it on the pitch
where a player sees someone else who is better
than they, they don’t like them or show disdain.
Tiger Woods – Changed his swing 4 years ago, hit
a peak, changed swing just to get to another level.
Mental Skills
Mental Toughness – you hear coaches say
a player needs to be mentally tough but
what is it and how do you do it??
4 C’s – these 4 C’s can come into play
here.
Commitment – you need an understanding from
everyone on your staff to buy into Mental
Training. Have an aura of stick ability in face of
adversary and keep going.
Control – Keep emotions in check, feel that
they are in control of life, they direct where they
are planning to go. They will make the
difference, not some external influence.
Mental Skills
Challenge – Talented players with fixed
mindsets are not striving to develop
themselves. See a problem as a threat, not
a challenge. A challenge should be looked
at as a form of self development.
Confidence – Owing to their abilities, these
players feel they are worth while.
Motivational Traits – these can have a
huge effect on players development.
Structured interviews. You can get an
understanding of what motivates him and
the language that motivates the player.
Mental Skills
Reactive or Proactive player?
The reactive player takes things on
board, thinks about them before
executing.
The proactive player needs different
language to motivate him. So when
you talk to a player you are able to
direct your language to get an
understanding.
Key words pop up, this take time,
Mental Skills
Case Study – talented player
Mental Skills
Mental Skills Training – Thinking correctly
under pressure, the event does not cause
pressure, the individual thought process
causes this pressure and performance
drops, on and off field.
Solution – need Thought Stopping –
negative phrases replaced with positive
Reflection – game focusing mind, Monday
AM need to know how he felt during the
game and post game.
Mental Skills
Mental Skills and Toughness Training
Your mind is linked to performance
50% of performance is related to state of mind. At
the National Level, it is closer to 90%,
Mental Training Skill sets are misunderstood as
they relate to preparation for competition.
The revolution in Mental Skill Training has not yet
happened as material is not yet readily
transferable to the field hockey player. Time?
Mental Skills Training is shrouded in mystery and
we need a structured approach in order to
integrate into training plans.
Mental Skills
Ever hear: “Stay Loose”, “be tough”, “hang
in there”, “concentrate, focus” - useless
terms
2 States: Flight or Fight State
It is not the situation rather how we view or
perceive the situation that is the cause.
Performance in execution is impacted even by
the smallest irregularities in breathing
Digestive system dysfunction
Mental Skills
Peak Performance State – baseball pitcher
Everything going your way, on a high
4 areas of composition
Composure
Concentration
Confidence – a composed player is a Confident
Player
Commitment – Mental skills strengthen your
commitment and motivation, commitment to do
nothing less than your peak performance..
Mental Skills
Exercises for Composure –
Symptoms: muscular tension & short
breathing patterns
Neck – close mouth – show teeth 6
sec
Need to get muscles in optimum
length – tension relationship.
Body Scan –
Mental Skills
Peak Performance Breathing – when
anxious or during skill execution we have a
tendency to breath shallow, faster. When
you hold your breath you raise heart beat,
breath from upper chest, hold your breath.
Eventually these things draw attention to
themselves and our focus changes to our
breathing patterns. A 2 second hold to
execute a skill is good but longer
immediately impacts performance
Correct breathing patterns- 1 – 2 second
holding of breathing at skill execution
Mental Skills
Peak Performance Concentration – you
can only focus on one channel at a time
Audio channel, visual channel, taste channel,
touch channel, visual channel, imagination
channel, touch (body feeling) channel
Channel Surfing – like on a TV – you have the
illusion that you are in more than one channel
at a time.
Body feeling channel – your back against the
chair, you feet on the floor, the pressure on you
upper hamstring where you are sitting (are you
a bit more focused now on how you feel in your
chair?)
Mental Skills
Audio Channel: inflection in my voice, surrounding
sounds, silence has its own sound
Visual Channel – where sport is played
Baseball player – 2 outs and 2 strikes turn on your
mental TV, 2 weeks ago you struck out in same
situation, this plays over and over again several
times in less than a second so imagination
channel takes over so you say stop and your inner
screen switches to inner voice channel, you see
wind up of pitcher and you switch to visual
channel, you feel your breathing patterns change
and you switch back to body feel channel
Mental Skills
When your mental TV screen is switching
channels the coach yells, concentrate Bob and
again your channels osculate to audio channel
and then back again to visual channel. All this
channel surfing causes lack of concentration in
visual channel where you want to be,
In order for the visual channel to stay on,
breathing skills, composure skills and many others
must be honed.
Then within the Visual Channel there is a broad
focus and a narrow focus. The broad focus enable
you to se much of the pitch and the narrow focus
is right about the ball or the man
Mental Skills
Visual clues
See all the objects, then see one object, then see
one part of one object, now focus on an even
smaller part of the but have someone talk with you
or distract you in some way.
Se it believe it: when you see an image or skill
being executed you actually feel it, images have a
powerful impact on performance – this is
visualization
Relax and see it
See it from within 75%
Feel it with all 5 senses, If image is incorrect –
erase it
Enjoy the process