POWER, POLITICS and the NBA FINALS

Taking Control of Your Feelings of Control

The Miami Heat – and LeBron James in particular – have taken a lot of “heat” for their inability to step up in the final minutes of play to close out games during the 2011 NBA Finals. The other big story dominating the news these days – the texting of sexy photos – by U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner, prompted an interesting discussion that is actually relevant to the problems James, D-Wade and company have been experiencing.

The question is being raised as to why so many politicians, from ex-President Bill Clinton, to Arnold Schwarznegger, to New York ex-governor Eliot Spitzer, to Congressman Weiner and many others, have engaged in extra-marital affairs or other behavior putting their political careers at risk (and in some cases ending them altogether).

Apart from what we call anecdotal evidence (all the examples) … there is research demonstrating that when people have power – or find themselves in situations where they feel empowered – they are more likely to take greater risks, act more boldly, etc. For example, in a study conducted at Florida State University where a male and female student were paired together, when the male was made to feel more powerful, he was more likely to flirt with the female.

In my own work with athletes, I see time after time after time, that when an athlete feels empowered (in other words, confident) he is more likely to play with greater aggressiveness. In fact, having asked some 50 basketball players how their game would be different if they had unlimited confidence, nearly every single one said they would be bolder and less tentative.

That is why so much of my sport psychology work is helping players find strategies to feel confident on a more routine basis – NO MATTER WHAT IS HAPPENING IN ANY GIVEN MOMENT OR IN THEIR MOST RECENT GAME.

So if LeBron in particular hasn’t been bringing his A game in the 4^th quarter of these contests (some sportswriters have called his shooting tentative), I would raise the possibility that something is getting in the way of his feeling empowered and able to go all out.

One possibility is all the excess baggage as far as his proving himself – all the promises and predictions that were made back in August – are getting in the way of his playing his best and bringing his full fierce competitiveness to bear when it is most needed. (Think of it as the Florida State male student who has been made, somehow, to feel LESS powerful – and so less likely to start to flirt with the woman.)

I know that most professional athletes will say that after they have a few good minutes – or get a couple of good shots off – their confidence shoots back up. But that kind of thinking makes them prisoners of their situation. They let their performance dictate their confidence – when the fiercest competitors do JUST THE OPPPOSITE – they find that confidence which will dictate their performance. 

A former NBA Rookie of the Year and multiple All Star once returned to action following a five-game absence due to injury. During the first few minutes of play his shot was flat and off the mark. He missed a number of shots until finally banking one off the backboard. After the game, he told me, “I had my mom and my agent and everyone telling me not to try to make up for five missed games right away, and to just ease in to things, but I kept thinking about it and couldn’t help myself, so I was pretty hyper for the first few minutes although after a while I settled down. Thank goodness for that 3-pointer going in, even though it was off the glass, or else I would have felt totally embarrassed.”

Of course, every player has to find his own rhythm, but this player seemed to be feeling beset by the demands of the moment to the point of lapse of confidence, and consequently waiting for that first shot to drop to get his confidence back.

Many players I work with tell me that when their confidence is low they would just as soon not get the ball – or not take the shot.  But the GREAT ONES believe in themselves ALL THE TIME (think Michael Jordan!!!)

The DuPont Company used to have a slogan “Better Living Through Chemistry.”  This applies to sports as well.  When a player’s game is off – he usually says something to himself like “Damn. What is happening tonight?” That apparently produces certain changes in a player's brain that cause him to disengage or otherwise become more tentative and cautious. On the other hand, when things are going well and he is “on,” that produces other chemical responses that make him feel bold and empowered.

The TRICK when things seem to be imploding is to step up MENTALLY by taking control over our thoughts and thus to over-ride this process and reverse it by letting go of certain thoughts and getting in touch with others to produce the chemical reaction that promotes the feelings of power. As a British soccer star put it, “When you are confident, you aren’t bothered about making mistakes.” When you feel bold, you are able to step up and hopefully deliver, but at the very least to bring the full extent of your talents to bear.

If D-Wade and LeBron can do that, they will make a lot of people in Miami very happy – and probably find redemption in their own eyes as well.

© 2011 by Dr. Mitchell Smith.  All Rights Reserved.

MAINTAINING COMPETITIVE FOCUS, Part 1

Training Your Focus Muscles

FOCUS. It’s one of the critical ingredients in athletic success.  Professional athletes with whom I have spoken who made the transition from college sports have all said pretty much the same thing – “At this (professional) level you can’t afford to lose focus for a moment. In college you could always get back into things, but in the pros you lose your focus and your opponent is going to take advantage of it.”

EVERYONE REMEMBERS – or has seen on ESPN's "Best of" segments - CHRISTIAN LAETTNER'S UNFORGETTABLE buzzer beater against Kentucky back in the 1992 NCAA Tournament – without which Duke would not have advanced to the Final Four … Duke would not have then won the National Championship for a second consecutive year … and Laettner might not have been named the Player of the Year.

Flash back three years to Laettner’s freshman season.  Already a blue chip player and past McDonald’s All American, Laettner and his team were up against the University of Arizona Wildcats, led by Laettner’s future NBA colleague Sean Elliot, playing in front of thousands in Madison Square Garden in New York City, and a national TV audience of millions. It was a close game.  Arizona was up by two with seconds to go when Laettner was fouled.  He stepped up to the foul line with a chance to tie the score.  He bounced the ball a couple of times, then readied for the shot.  It closed in on the rim … and then (slow motion here if this was a movie!!!) rimmed out. Laettner took his second shot … and  missed that one as well.

What was going through Laettner’s mind as he stood there on the foul line.  “If I make these shots we can still pull of the win…”???  “I MUST make these shot…” ???  “I CANNOT let my teammates down…”???  Whatever it was, Laettner’s focus was likely NOT on the task of sinking those free throws, but on the consequences of his succeeding or failing

Chances are – in one variation or another – you’ve been where Christian Laettner was.

In this series – we will be looking at some of the typical challenges to your focus, exactly what focus consists of, and how you can stay focused – or regain focus when you have become distracted.

WHAT IS THE KEY TO STAYING FOCUSED? A huge part of my conversations with bigs ends up on this subject, as they tell me of the things that take them OUT of their focus.  Ninety per cent (or more) of the time, their concern is to regain focus when they have has lost it.  

One of the things I most commonly hear from athletes is that when they make a mistake, have a bad shot, etc, they get annoyed and it takes them out of their focus. Just the other day, I received an email from a post player telling me about a recent event when a missed defensive assignment led to shouts from his coach on the sidelines, leading to a missed shot on the other end of the court as he was focusing on his coach’s words (and thoughts of being benched).

Anytime an athlete makes a mistake or misses an assignment, it is always going to present a challenge to his focus.  Like anything else, an athlete’s focus will go up and down in the course of a game. So most of the time, the problem is to re-set your focus when it is starting to slip.

This has been the case with a tennis player I have been working with, the number two player on his school’s roster.  Every time a shot went long or into the net, he would become annoyed.  He would allow that feeling to stay with him, eating away at his confidence, so that he was thinking about almost any- thing except having his head in the next point. 

While making fewer mistakes is one way to deal with this situation, there is no such thing as an athlete who NEVER makes a mistake, so that is – at best – a very partial solution.  Furthermore, an athlete who plays to avoid making mistakes is not likely to improve; his play will often be tentative, rarely bold or aggressive. 

Consider the attitude that helped tennis player Lindsay Davenport to win the 1998 U.S. Open: 

"I didn’t want to just be out there getting the ball back in.  I was going to go all out - even if I made 60 unforced errors.  I didn’t want to leave anything on the court."

One of the things that I had been working on with this athlete was how to keep things simple – both on and off the court.  For example, he found that if, during practice, he decided to give his attention to one part of his game exclusively, he was less concerned with making mistakes in other aspects.  So if, for example, he was focusing on his backhand, or coming to the net, then he was more “forgiving” of himself with respect to mistakes made in other parts of his game.  Furthermore, he found that by focusing on one aspect of his game, he would find himself making improvements in that aspect, and would notice a “spillover” effect so that the incremental confidence he began to feel would lead to stronger play and fewer mistakes in other parts of his game in that same practice.

So I asked him to complete the following sentence: “I don’t care if I make mistakes as long as…”

Here is what he came up with (after I told him that a good answer would not be “as long as my opponent makes more mistakes!”)… “I don’t care if I make mistakes as long as I can keep my focus.”

In other words, a mistake does not need to be an occasion to get off track.

If anything I suggested to him that making a mistake could be an opportunity to actually strengthen his focus “muscles”, in a way that would not be likely if he were not making any mistakes.

Consider, after all, how we build muscle in the gym.  When we lift weights, we are actually breaking down muscle tissue.  Afterwards, when the tissue repairs itself, it comes back stronger than before.  It is, after all, called “resistance” training.  If we think of focus in the same way, then when we subject our focus to resistance (such as in making mistakes, becoming annoyed and “losing” our focus – but then working to quickly regain it) we are building the “focus muscles,” making them stronger than before.  The key, then, is in the “working to quickly regain it”.

This involves consciously deciding to put all non-relevant thoughts out of mind.  Being annoyed at a mistake is understandable; we all experience that.  But the more quickly you tell yourself to re-focus, the more effective you will be in competition.

Consider the example given by skier Bonnie St. John, silver medal winner in the 1984 Paralympics slalom.  She noted that

In my first run of the slalom I was ahead, but then I fell down and had to get up to complete the race.  In fact, the woman who won the gold medal also fell down. I knew from previous races that I could ski faster than her.  But what won the gold medal for her was that she got up faster than I did after falling down.  I learned that everybody falls down – but Olympic athletes get up faster, and gold medalists get up the fastest of all.

Substitute “regain focus” for “getting up”, and you get the point.

NBA Hall of Famer Karl Malone once said that if you’re not willing to make mistakes you are never really going to improve as a player.  Consider this, too:  you are going to make mistakes.  The more you are willing to develop an attitude that instead of letting the mistakes get the best of you, they can become opportunities to improve your ability to stay focused – the more competitive you are likely to become.

         The more I focus, the less I worry about pressure.

              - Nick Price, winner of the 1994 U.S. Open and PGA Championship

© 2017 by Dr. Mitchell Smith.  All Rights Reserved.

MAINTAINING COMPETITIVE FOCUS, Part 2

Managing Distractions

Jay, a senior who was captain of his college team, came to see me because he felt that his confidence was subject to negative swings. He mentioned, for example, that because of his leadership position he felt that each time he made a mistake during competition it reflected badly on him and he feared losing the respect of the younger players. When he made a mistake, he let it affect his confidence (which, of course, made it more likely for him to commit another mistake).

   Another factor was the presence of his coach on the sideline, yelling instructions to him during games.  Paying attention to the coach’s comments caused him at times to over think the moment, and instead of staying in the flow of the game, the briefest of pauses or hesitations would make the difference between a well-executed play and a mis-step or turnover.

   Added to this was the other team’s coach who, having watched tapes of Jay’s team, would yell to his own players how Jay was likely to play the ball so that they could stop him. Jay reported that this, too, resulted in some lost confidence as he became focused in the moment on rethinking his tactics to match wits with the other team’s coach.

   Finally, Jay mentioned the presence at games of pro team scouts in the stands.  As a senior with hopes of playing professionally after graduation, it was very important to Jay that he make a good showing to impress the scouts, and conversely, the thought of making mistakes that they would witness was a source of great concern.

   Without a doubt, any athlete who is being scrutinized by scouts (or by college coaches if he is a high school player) wants to play at his best.  The paradox is that this desire often turns into the kind of pressure a player starts to feel that gets in the way of the very thing he wants to do, i.e., play his best.

   Some years ago the Golden State Warriors drafted international player Jiri Welsch, a talented swingman. One night in his rookie year, Welsch went 0-for-10 against Orlando.  Afterwards I asked him about it.  “I just kept thinking about how I needed to show my coach that I deserved to be out on the floor,” he said. The pressure he felt from that concern clearly got in the way of his playing in such a way as to show his coach that he had the goods.

   On top of everything else, Jay was still coming back from a pre-season injury, so he wasn’t in his best shape when his team recently played the no. 1 ranked team in the country, adding to his frustration and further chipping away at his confidence.

   What all of the above-mentioned factors have in common is that they are all distractions from the thing that is most likely to help Jay play his best and let his talents shine. 

   The thing that is going to help Jay the most is his focusing on the game as it is being played, scanning continually to alert himself to the location of the ball, his teammates, the opposing team’s players, etc, and staying sufficiently relaxed – both physically and mentally – to make the best decisions with – and without – the ball, and executing those decisions skillfully.

   Anything that detracts from his giving his full attention to these factors becomes a distraction.

   The goal is to stay on task – and that means having strategies to keep from getting derailed when other factors become distractions.

   With regard to the comments that his own coach and the opposing coach were yelling from the sidelines, it was important for Jay to find a way to limit the ways in which those comments might affect him.  Of course, his own coach’s comments could be particularly useful in helping him with the game’s tactical play.  He needed a way to take those comments in with that in mind – while at the same time not allowing these comments to take him out of his rhythm or to affect his confidence. 

   For that purpose, I took Jay through a series of visualization exercises that would help him become more proficient at doing this – along with the directive that he begin to anticipate these comments so that when they did come he would not become fazed as he had in the past.  The same thing applied to the comments from opposing coaches.

   With regard to the presence of scouts in the stands, that too presented a potential distraction. Playing his best depended on Jay staying focused on what was occurring in the game, not what might be going through the minds of some individuals in the stands.  Again, paradoxically, to have the best chance of impressing the scouts he needed to find strategies to prevent his focus from veering in the direction of those very scouts.

   The matter of Jay’s status as team captain and leader presents a similar situation.  His determination to be a good leader is admirable.  Like most of us, Jay is sensitive to how falling short or making mistakes would affect his perception and esteem in the eyes of his younger teammates – and this has added to the pressure he feels. 

   I asked Jay what he says to the underclassmen on the team when they make mistakes.  “I tell them to keep their head up and don’t let it bother them,” he told me.  But somehow, if he imagined them saying the same thing to him, it didn’t seem to do the trick.  However, if he thought about certain professional players who might make such a comment to him, it felt more authentic and served to convincingly remind him that everyone makes mistakes – no one is perfect.

   Along similar lines, British soccer star John Salako noted that “When you’re confident, you’re not afraid to make mistakes.”  In other words, as noted in Part 1, there are certain situations or states of mind where athletes aren’t bothered by making mistakes. Reflecting on this also helped Jay to develop a greater ability to stay on task.

   One final point worth noting is that most athletes give only part of their focus over to tasks of proper execution – while part of their focus is tied to matters of self-esteem and ego.

   In any task, part of our motivation is task-oriented and part of us is ego-oriented. Athletes who are more task-oriented athletes pay attention to matters of effort, execution and improvement, and view success in those matters as more important than the opinions of others or a game’s outcome.

   On the other hand, the more ego-oriented we are, the more likely we are to pay attention to what other people think of us and our performance… and when things aren’t going well we may focus more on trying to maintain and preserve a sense of emotional well-being. When an athlete is overly concerned about the opinions or reactions of coaches, teammates, family or friends, it is likely due to those motivations which are ego-based. While this is understandable – we sometimes need to step back and shift our priorities to insure focusing on the things that can most make a difference in our performance AT THE MOMENT.

   Elite athletes are often found to be high in both ego and task orientation.  They appreciate that it is not always possible to win or have a satisfying outcome, but at the same time they are highly motivated to win and outperform the competition.  For these athletes, a strong awareness of their motivation helps them to remain focused and stay on task. Developing specific strategies for managing distractions that inevitably arise makes these athletes mentally tough competitors who are equipped to play their best when the stakes are high.

© 2009 by Dr. Mitchell Smith.  All Rights Reserved.

USING VISUALIZATION FOR SPORT SUCCESS

 Part 1: Strengthening the Mind-Body

Connection for Top-Level Execution

   A post player who has been playing in Europe for two seasons and was the Defensive Player of the Year in his league last year wrote me with the following question:

“I would like to use visualization in my mental approach.  I have tried it before a bit but would like to improve on this and become more consistent with it.  Do I visualize myself doing shooting drills and such - or do I try to picture actual game situations? How often should I visualize? And for how long?”

ANSWER:

   First, keep in mind the goal of visualization – which is to reproduce and experience IN YOUR MIND certain situations that you have had (or would like to) experience IN YOUR BODY. It is something we all do naturally (such as when we remember a past event from our lives and can picture it in our mind) – but for an athlete this can have special benefit when we use it as a strategy to improve our execution as a player. Research has demonstrated how we can experience – at least in some measure – precisely the same things in our mind that occur in our body in actual activity For example, when downhill skiers use visualization to picture their run down the slope, they activate the exact same muscles in sequence as if they were in actual competition.  Using visualization strengthens the neuro-muscular connections that we activate when we translate our intention (in a drop-step shot for example) into action.   

   Thus, the main benefit of using visualization is to improve and strengthen your physical skills by repeatedly strengthening the mind-body connections.  

– such as a play in a past game – or any experience you might like to have – such as shooting free throws, or making certain post moves decisively and aggressively..

   One question to ask yourself is: What is it that you want to improve?

   For example - a player who has been doing drills every day to get better in some part of his game could visualize doing the same drills in his mind.  As he does this, he could notice what is happening when he does a drill in his mind. Does it feel like it flows well or is there hesitation? Does it feel like he is executing precisely or that he is struggling a bit?  After doing this a few times – he will get a good idea of what he needs to do better or do differently to get that move or play to perfection.

   The next step is what we call MASTERY – that is, doing the drill over and over in his mind with the proper moves, timing, and feel of his body.  There is research that athletes who use visualization in this way along with doing the drill itself in the gym perform better than players who ONLY do the drill itself without spending time using visualization. (For example, individuals who practiced their free throw shooting AND engaged in visualizing successful free throw shooting were able to improve their free throw shooting percentage significantly higher than others who spent the same amount of time in practice but did NOT do the visualization.)

   Visualization can also help prepare for game day. One very effective thing to do the day before a game or the morning of the game is to picture certain situations that might come up and see yourself making successful moves to score, rebound, pass, or defend in each of those situations. 

   Baseball Hall of Fame legend Hank Aaron used to go to the ball park early the day of a game, and while some of his teammates were in the clubhouse playing cards, he would take time to visualize whoever was pitching that day, and each possible pitch he might see… and how he would respond to that pitch. Doing this as part of his pre-game routine gave him increased confidence and decisiveness when he was at bat.

  

   A player might use visualization with regard to MISTAKES he made in previous games – seeing what he did wrong - then “rewinding the tape” to the moment just before he made the mistake, and then picture doing it a better way. Doing this a few times can really help LEARN FROM MISTAKES or missed shots, missed rebounds or missed defensive moves in order to CORRECT and IMPROVE his level of play.

   He could also use visualization to picture various situations where he wanted to work on his decision making with the ball, seeing himself with the ball and picture himself making STRONG MOVES and FEELING CONFIDENT.

   The value of visualization might be seen in the fact that over 90% of Olympic athletes report using visualization in their quest for an Olympic medal. Athletes who routinely use visualization with consistency report improving such things as going strong to the hoop, feeling confident in being able to outplay their defender, and quickly finding their game rhythm when they are on the floor.