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.