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ACKNoWLEDGEMENTSThis book owes its existence to the skills, understanding and help of a great many people to whom I wish to say a heartfelt THANK YOU. At the top of this list are Karen McCreadie, Ros Carter, Noel Ford, Jeff Scott, Sylvie Blair and all the team at BookPod and my parents, David & Margaret, who had to endure painstaking hours of listening to me rabbit on and on about what should and should not be included as well as untold (and unpaid) hours of editing. Regrettably they weren’t the only ones to suffer. To all my friends who endured mini-consultations about sport and psychology far too many times, thanks for bearing with me: James Akerman, Barry Bond, Barbara Buffton, Tony Burton, Rosanne Cole, Stephen Green, Nick Hallas, Gerard Jakimavicius, Chris Lewis, Kev McKee, Paul Moore, Gary Rees, Martyn Rees, Stef Round, Dr. Martin Smith, Eurof Thomas, Kenny Walker – to name but a few!

There have also been some influential characters on the way who may not realise just how much their thoughts and ideas impacted on me - Dr. Paul Balsom, Dr. Richard Bandler, George Burley, Piers Carter, Amy Chu, Martin Clarke, Liz Coley, Robert Dilts, Frank Farrelly, Charles Faulkener, Mo Gimpel, John Gorman, Dr. John Grinder, Michael Johnson, Phil Jones, Mark Lovatt, Jim Magilton, Pete McCrory, Ian McDermott, John McGlasson, Paul McKenna, Barry Mortimer, Tony Mowbray, Dr. Pammie Murray, Michael Neill, Nigel Pearson, Chris Powell, Norman Randall, Gary Rees, Warren Scott, Craig Shakespeare, David Shephard, Neil Smith, Marcel Szenessy, Ian Taylor, Steve Walsh, Malcolm Webster - and the thousands of delegates on my training courses, including the many servicemen and women of the Armed Forces who have helped add to my understanding and development of techniques. Thanks one and all.

Finally, there is a very long list of individuals that I wish to thank and without whom this book would not exist – the sportsmen and women, managers and coaches that I’ve worked with over the years who have allowed me to get to know and explore their mental approach to sport. You know who you are - a truly heartfelt thanks.

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HoW To READ THiS booKThere may be several reasons why you have decided to read this book so I would like to offer some ideas how you can use it to your best advantage. It will quickly become apparent that this is not a theoretical book but a book detailing practical aspects of sports psychology. The emphasis is very much on a ‘how to’ approach – how to improve aspects like motivation, confidence, concentration, self-belief and much more.

The book is divided into four parts:

Part 1 - The Territory of Mental Mastery: This is a brief summary of the territory of sports psychology. It includes some general findings and background as well as information on some of the latest conclusions and findings that occupy sports psychologists today.

Part 2 - Foundations of Mental Mastery: This is recommended reading if you want to get the best from the techniques that follow in part three. Well-read readers may meet some familiar items here but there will certainly be ‘new stuff ’ for everyone. Chapter 6, in particular, will stand all readers in good stead for appreciating the power of many of the techniques that follow.

Part 3 – Essentials of Mental Mastery: This is the transformational meat of the book. It is split into specific subject areas that you will be familiar with. Each chapter begins with background on the topic, its relevance to sporting excellence and some of the latest scientific insights before delving into a number of specific techniques to address different issues. Each technique comes with a Key Code (see overleaf ) which provides you with a practical tool for improving your own and/or other people’s sporting performance through mental mastery.

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Key Code:

Part 4 – Beyond Mastery: This section covers two very different areas (injuries and energy, the power of language) which may appeal more to those who are involved in offering support services to sportsmen and women – for example, coaches, managers, physiotherapists, fitness coaches, nutritionists, etc.

Use this if... A short explanation of the types of situations that the technique is designed for. How easy to do: A five-point scale is used to rate each technique in terms of difficulty. A single means a technique is easy; whilst means a technique is more difficult and may require a little more practise. All have been designed for any reader to use.

What’s required: Some guidance about what’s needed to run the technique successfully.

How long will it take? The time that should be allocated to each technique.

What you can expect if you try the technique: The kind of results that you can expect.

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There are two ‘break out’ boxes distributed throughout the book – Coaching Tips and Case Studies. The Coaching Tips are designed to help training professionals to get the most from their athletes whilst the Case Studies give real world examples of how some of the techniques work and the results you can expect.

Coaching tip:

Throughout the book you will find Coaching Tips – for those readers who are interested in a coaching perspective.

Case Study

Also liberally sprinkled throughout the book are a number of case studies – simple stories about how particular aspects of sports psychology have been applied.

Some of the techniques are really easy to do, taking just a few minutes – others require a little more commitment and may involve practising something over a period of time. If a technique doesn’t seem to be for you, move on and find something that is! Most of the techniques are very easily adaptable and there is a matrix at the back of the book (see overleaf ) that indicates which techniques are most suitable or adaptable to various psychological issues. The coding - - indicates adaptability.

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Page Technique

Belief

Confidence

Focus & Concentration

Goal Setting

Emotions

Injuries, Energy

Mental Rehearsal

Motivation

Optim

istic Mind

Mental Toughness

42 Complaints Fast

43 Optimising

45 Handling Criticism

You may decide you want to read the book from start to finish.  Alternatively you may wish to ‘cut to the chase’ to find a specific aspect of your mental game that you want to work on – either way will work.  I would still recommend that you read part 2 so you get more out of specific chapters and techniques and avoid having to flick back for references or explanation.

TerminologyAs with many books there have necessarily been some choices to make – not the least about terminology – so please note the following:

• The words athlete and player have been used interchangeably. All techniques and processes are applicable whatever your sport - though some may be more applicable than others!

• This book is intended to be user-friendly, regardless of your background and interest. Thus I have tried, wherever possible, to avoid technical jargon. Unfortunately, it has sometimes been unavoidable.

• I have used the phrase ‘unconscious mind’ to describe that part of our mind that operates without conscious awareness. If your preference is for ‘subconscious’ or even ‘other-than-conscious’ – simply substitute them.

• I have maintained confidentiality of all athletes I have worked with except for those who have already mentioned me in various publications.

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FoREWoRDWondering how you can improve your game? Fed up losing to inferior players? Searching for ingredients to take your performances to new levels? Concerned about the variability in your performances? Seeking different ways to understand and analyse your game? Want to gain new insights into your approach to your sport? Recognise that it would pay you to focus on your mental game? You’ve reached for the right book!

This is a reference book for sportsmen and women, their coaches and managers, and anyone who is involved in improving mental aspects of sporting performance. It covers all major problems encountered in sport by detailing techniques, case studies and coaching tips to help you understand how you can improve your mental game.

There are two conditions in which this book may prove especially useful – the first being when you are feeling somewhat disillusioned with your game. Or as Morgan Scott Peck, author of ‘The Road Less Travelled’ put it:

“The truth is that our finest moments are likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our own discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways

or truer answers.”

But focusing on overcoming deficiencies, correcting problems or resolving difficulties is only half the story. The second condition in which you may find this book particularly useful is when you wish to lift your game to a new level – to take it from good to great. The techniques in this book can provide the mental ammunition to help you produce explosive yet controlled performances whenever you need it. Explosive because the high-octane fuel that arises from a mixture of being at the top of your physical and mental game ensures that you perform at your very best.

Several of the techniques within the book are based on ideas from NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). It is true to say that aspects of NLP have yet to come under serious scientific scrutiny. This book, however, is not

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based on what works in the laboratory but what works in the field. I have not included any techniques that I have not personally used successfully with many clients in many different sports.

For me this book is still a ‘work in progress’. I continue to develop new methods and ways to help athletes improve their mental game. If you have any comments to make on these techniques or about the book or even have a technique or variation of a technique that has worked well for you then I’d love to hear from you. You can email me at ken@vsl.co.uk.

I wish you all the best with the improvements you’re about to experience in your mental game.

Ken Way

ken@vsl.co.uk

www.visionsports.co.uk

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iNTRoDuCTioN

“Those that win for a living like a challenge.”

Steve Redgrave, five-times Gold medal winner in rowing.James Cracknell, Steve Redgrave, Tim Foster and Matthew Pinsent in

the coxless fours at the Sydney Olympics.

Whether you are an enthusiastic amateur or a seasoned professional, there can be little doubt that incorporating a mental routine into your physical training regime can significantly improve your performance. Great athletes and coaches alike know that the ‘battle’ is rarely won or lost on the course, track or pitch; it is won or lost in the six inches between your ears.

Sport has embraced the mental link to success more readily than perhaps any other field of endeavour. Sports psychology is now a well respected study of the mental tools and techniques that can assist coaches, managers, individual athletes and teams to harness the awesome power of their mind. It focuses on finding ways to increase performance by consciously managing

Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images

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the mind/body connection towards peak performance and is concerned with:

a) How psychological factors affect an individual’s physical performance;

b) How performance and participation in sporting activity or physical exercise can affect a person’s psychological health and well-being.

The vast majority of sports psychologists are based in academic institutions, which means that the profession benefits from appropriate funding and research. The cloud from which this silver lining is drawn however is that the knowledge and science that emerges from these hotbeds of intellectual insight is most usually buried away in an obscure journal or presented to the world in an academic format - you need to be an academic to understand what is being said. For example here’s a passage from a sports psychology book on my bookshelf…

“Specifically, sports-confidence-state was hypothesized to be positively related to sports-confidence-trait and performance orientation, to be negatively related to outcome orientation, and to be a critical mediator of behaviour. Subjective outcomes (e.g. causal attributions, perceptions of success, satisfaction) were predicted to have a reciprocal relationship with sports-confidence-trait and competitive orientation.”

Do you have the time amid your training schedule or coaching responsibilities to figure out what that means and whether or not it is relevant to you? And even if you do understand it, do you have the slightest clue how to use the information to make practical improvements in your performance? The territory of sports psychology is now well-mapped, but there is a dearth of practical, easy to follow, ‘how to’ literature. This book is designed as an answer to that challenge.

I have been involved in sports psychology for more than thirty years as an academic and a practical hands-on psychologist at the sharp end of professional sport. My experience and development in this area have led me on a journey that has meant studying, researching and qualifying in

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many related disciplines, for example: applied psychology, psychotherapy, psychometrics, hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming, neuro-semantics and a whole host of other often unconventional and ‘out-of-the-box’ fields of study! There has always been but one aim; how to improve the mental game in sport.

In his book Good to Great Jim Collins opens with an immortal truth: “Good is the enemy of great.” The book is actually a management book but what Collins argues is supremely relevant to athletes seeking an edge.

He argues that, “We don’t have great schools principally because we have good schools. We don’t have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it’s just so easy to settle for a good life.”

There is a parallel to this in sport where many sportsmen and women have mentally held themselves back for the same reason – they have failed to reach a great standard of performance principally because they managed to reach a good standard of performance. At an individual level it works like this: a player trains and trains, improves and improves…. makes it into the first team or surpasses a certain selection criteria - then having made the grade, they mentally relax. Now whether this ‘mental relaxation’ is conscious or not is immaterial – the result is the same. Athletes effectively limit themselves in terms of continuing improvement. They reach ‘good’ and cease the very processes that made them good. In effect they become ‘good enough’ - and fail to maintain the drive that could help them make the leap to great.

Sports psychology is a fascinating subject that offers a wealth of information that can significantly improve performance, whether that is individually or collectively as a team. It is very often the mental aspect of performance that determines whether races are won or lost. Championships, medals and six-figure prize money can depend on one or two critical mental elements and defeat can be snatched from the jaws of victory by the slightest lapse of concentration. So, training your mind is every bit as important as training your body. It is the difference that can take you from good to great.

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This book is your road map from good to great. Whether you are a professional athlete searching for an edge or a way to break through a performance barrier, whether you are a serious amateur looking to reach a new level in your sport or whether you are a coach looking for ideas on how to tap into player potential or help a team gel together, this book contains over one hundred techniques, coaching tips and case studies to help you make and sustain the transition from good to great.

This is first and foremost a practical handbook of sports psychology techniques: what can be achieved, why they are so important, and how and when to use them. It is divided into four parts.

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Part 4:BEYOND MASTERY

LanguageEnergy Rehabilitation

Part 3: ESSENTIALS OF MASTERY

Team Spirit Belief & ConfidenceMental Toughness Focus & ConcentrationEmotions The Zone Relentless Enthusiasm

Part 2: FOUNDATIONS OF MASTERY

Optimistic Mind Goal Setting Mental Rehearsal

Part 1:THE TERRITORY OF SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY