The Psychology of Working with Elite Athletes
[Music]
good afternoon everybody thank you for
coming
joel fish is my name sports psychologist
licensed psychologist
run the center for sports psychology in
philadelphia and i’ve worked for over 25
years with athletes of all ages and
skill levels from little kids
through the olympic and professional
ranks and my goals here today
is i talk about the psychology of
working with elite and professional
athletes is a to bring you up to date on
what sports psychology and what sports
performance has to say about
working with professional and elite
athletes
b did i give you some idea about what
plan i use
with elite athletes that i hope gives
you a better understanding of how to
work with elite athletes and
professional athletes but also that
you’re able to apply to yourself
or to other recreational athletes or for
those of you that are weekend athletes
and see my other goal is that hopefully
you learn about more about yourself
and somebody else in this room because
if we’re going to talk about mental
preparation
confidence composure concentration what
we call mental skills
i’m hoping that you take what we talk
about today and apply it to yourself
learn something about somebody else in
this room and think about someone who
you may be working with
recreational athlete weekend athlete or
in a leader pro
athlete develop what we call in sports
psychology a mental skills game plan
to help and what i’d like to quickly
walk you through and this is based on my
experience
with working with elite athletes the
professional basketball players on the
left i’m on the right there in case you
need to see that
so all the experience i’m drawing from
with you revolves related to a team
revolves related to work i’ve been doing
with over 25 years
with different professional elite and
olympic athletes
and again i’m drawing on that experience
to help you come up with what we call a
mental game plan and that mental game
plan
is going to be the following the game
plan is i’m always
in terms of my program with athletes
step one helping them to understand what
their own attitudes are
about winning losing success failure
competition
step two identifying certain stressors
and challenges
maybe it’s after the athlete misses a
shot maybe it’s letting go of a bad play
maybe it’s having something somebody say
something to them from the audience
specifically let’s boil in let’s hone in
on specific situations that are
challenging
for you mentally so see we can come up
with a mental skills game plan
strategies techniques that you can apply
towards that challenging situation
and then step four is always to evaluate
tweak the formula if we need be
so i’m going to be going through quickly
this mental skills game plan with you
and again my goal is that it reinforces
certain things you already know
about working with highly talented
people
and that you can apply towards yourself
or be maybe through our conversation
together
gives you some new ways to approach
working with a talented person an elite
professional athlete
to help them with their mental part of
the game so step one
if i’m working with you or anybody else
but certainly when i’m working with
professional lead athletes
i’ll ask you a question that i’ve asked
hundreds maybe thousands
of elite athletes and that question is
what percentage of performance do you
think is mental
and we’re defining mental is confidence
composure concentration
communication teamwork is it ten percent
twenty percent thirty percent fifty
percent eighty percent
because if i’m going to spend time with
you elite athlete olympic athlete
professional athlete i need that buy-in
from you
i need to make sure that you think this
is important
and i can guarantee you just one thing
and one thing only in this talk i’m
giving you today if you ask that
question to an elite athlete
to a recreational athlete to a weekend
out there what percentage of performance
is mental
they’re going to say 30 50 80 percent
mental
so my comeback to that if the game is
largely mental if performance is largely
mental
let’s spend 10 15 minutes a week
10 15 minutes a week if not more talking
about the mental part of the game
thinking about the mental part of the
game strategizing for the mental part of
the game
because i’ll ask you to trust me if we
can improve the mental game three or
five percent
three or five percent i can show you
documentation up to the ceiling that’s
what we call the mental edge
three or five percent for an elite
athlete a pro
athlete any athlete there’s a difference
between going to the fat line
and the game’s on the line with
confidence or with your knee shake
three or five percent in an academic
setting a performance situation giving a
public talk like this is the difference
between standing up in a crowd
and feeling confident again or with your
knees shaking
three or five percent when we’re in a
crowd of people
maybe people we don’t know is the
difference between feeling comfortable
enough that when you’re with a crowd of
people you’re able to look them in the
eye and say hi joel fish nice to meet
you
or you’re with a group of people and you
don’t feel very confident so you spend
half your time looking at the ceiling
you’re looking at the floor
three or five percent is the mental edge
and so i will get the athlete what
percentage is mental it’s largely mental
let’s go to step two which is let’s
identify some specific situations
that are challenging to you mentally
welcome to the club you’re not machines
you’re not robots this is all part of
your player development this is all part
of your personal development
let’s normalize it if you will so
as i said earlier maybe that challenging
situation is letting go of a mistake
maybe it’s after missing a few shots
moving on to the next play
i was working with a field hockey player
very talented national level field
hockey player
the time she had most anxiety if you
will she would tend to overthink
was right before the game so what did we
practice that mental skill
of the sport part of sports psychology
which is mental skills training
we practice what we call positive
self-talk the messages that we give to
ourselves
do influence how we feel how we perform
so her words not mind she came up with a
key word key phrase that was going to
represent her positive self-talk
and before the national anthem and
during the national anthem she’d be
lined up there with all her teammates
take a deep breath and while that
national anthem was playing she would
say to herself
her key word here key phrase her
positive self-talk
just give me the courage to do the best
i can do give me the courage to do the
best i can do and then in a key moment
in a game
she wouldn’t shout it out loud but
sometimes when she’d be running up and
down the field
particularly after a mistake she’d say
to herself the word courage
carriage i can’t believe i carriage
official how could you make courage
sometimes
positive self-talk when we have a
keyword key phrase
that we can direct our thoughts to it
gives us an
anchor for our thoughts and a lot of
elite athletes a lot of professional
athletes olympic athletes
are playing under a big microscope i
would never say to you i’d never say to
any athlete
don’t feel anxiety don’t feel stressed
don’t feel anything but if you do
let’s talk about a plan help you manage
that emotion just a little bit better
be in control that emotion rather than
emotion be in control of you positive
self-talk
give me the courage to do the best i can
do other mantras that we help athletes
come up with is something that we
practice with them so in a key moment of
a game
when they’re in that challenging mental
situation they can redirect their
thoughts
back to that anchor gain perspective
stay in the moment other sports
strategies i work with elite athletes
and the sport part of sports psychology
the mental skills training
it’s just maybe relax
and how to take that deep breath
and slow down like i’m doing with you
right now
because when you slow down heartbeat
slows down blood pressure slow
blood rate slows down but a lot of us
especially competitors
competitor within us when things aren’t
going our way we don’t slow down because
we have these messages
i gotta bear down i gotta try hard try
harder sometimes we do but my work with
elite athletes
pro athletes talented people
nine out of 10 times it’s not about
trying harder
it’s about slowing down
regaining composure be in control of
those emotions rather
those emotions being in control of the
purse
maybe we’ll practice focus techniques
concentration techniques
okay how to improve that
because i really really believe that
there are strategies techniques
ways that we can teach our elite
athletes
to improve their concentration their
focus
and rather than me just talking about it
let me demonstrate with you what i do
sometimes with some elite athletes with
the goal
of improving focus concentration
so i’m going to give all of you five or
six different commands i’m going to ask
you to see something hear something feel
something
i’m going to ask you to shift your
attention and i want to see how well
you’re able to follow my commands and
direct your thoughts
direct your attention direct your focus
towards where i ask you to do it
okay choose to look me in the eye
choose to be aware of the sounds coming
from outside this room
choose to be aware of the feeling in
your right foot wherever it rests
wherever it lies
choose to shift your attention to your
left foot and be aware of your left foot
wherever it rests wherever it lies
choose to listen to the sound of the
ventilation system
choose to be aware of your right foot
choose to look me in the eye
at ease were you able to hang in there
with me
what word did i use more than any other
word choose to
because when you’re choosing to look me
in the eye you’re not aware of the
sounds coming from outside
when you’re choosing to be aware of your
right foot you know to wear the feelings
in your left foot we have tremendous
power
i believe a focused concentration when
we’re coming from a place of choice
choose to bear down choose to lighten up
choose to move on to the next play
choose to have an attitude of learning
and improving i would never say to any
athlete
and we talk about this a lot in the
psychology of working with the lead and
professional athletes
block this out block this out don’t
think that don’t think that because you
know what happens if i say to you block
that out don’t think about it don’t
think about it
all of a sudden you’re thinking about it
it’s like me telling you don’t think
about your belly button don’t think all
of a sudden you’re thinking about it but
when you’re choosing to be in the moment
choosing to move on to the next play
choosing to calm down that gives us
power us control
a really important concentration
technique that i think
we can teach recreational athletes
weekend athletes but that i do with
professional athletes with
olympic athletes with elite performers
the other parts of sport from the sports
psychology it might be mental
preparation what do you like to do the
night before a game an hour before your
game 10 minutes before the game
individual differences let’s try to
learn from our experience to be able to
identify and then apply those ideas
visualization where you watch yourself
the night before a game
and you just imagine three scenarios
that might come up in that game that
next day or that performance
imagine a good scenario okay scenario
and not okay scenario how do you want to
look how do you want to feel
the idea behind visualization is when
you watch yourself perform in a certain
way when you’re in that situation you
feel like you’ve been there before
and if you feel like you’ve been there
before you’re going to be more in
control you feel more in control you’re
going to feel more self-confident
you feel more self-confident your
natural talent is going to flow
the athlete’s the one that’s told me
performance is 30
50 80 percent mental okay so we’re going
to spend 15 minutes a week or hopefully
more
talking about it thinking about it
developing strategies for it
because if we can improve that three or
five percent that’s the mental edge
that’s a sport part of sport performance
in psychology
the psychology part that i work with
with elite athletes has to do with
anything in their personal life
that can be impacting on their
performance so i’ve talked with elite
and professional athletes for 25 years
anxiety stress relationships real world
stuff
welcome to the club you’re not a robot
you’re not a machine
so for example i had an elite golfer a
pro golf or pga golfer just two weeks
ago said to me joel i’m in a slump
what’s your slump be more specific with
the stressor
let’s put together a mental game plan
for it he goes i’m leading these
tournaments in the 16th 17th and 18th
round i can’t close it out
well in five minutes i said tell me
about yourself in five minutes he’s
talking about his mother father his
family and to make a long story short he
left college
early in order to pursue a professional
golf career
and whenever against the wishes of his
parents against the wishes of
who became now his wife and whenever he
was in a position to close out a
tournament
prove to them i made the right decision
i made the right decision he would
tighten his
grip wasn’t able to pot
we ended up spending a lot of time
talking about his parents
about proving himself about his wife
that’s a psychology case
all normal stuff that we can’t just turn
it off on and off when we’re on the
playing field sometimes
there’s a sport part the mental skills
training part and sometimes it’s a
psychology part because if there’s some
underlying
issue that’s kind of there we need to
really address that understand it
help you with that so that your natural
talent can flow
there’s no magic to any of this stuff
but since that time he’s really really
improved
his finishing tournaments his putting
he’s the one that said to me i feel
freer inside
because in psychology we always say it’s
better to get things out rather than to
keep it in
so my work with elite and professional
athletes with people in general
it’s about sometimes trying to find out
what the root of their feelings are
that’s the psychology part
we can improve the mental game we can
improve
that three or five percent that’s what
the psychology of working with
athletes is all about think of it this
way if we improve one percentage point a
week
in the middle part of the game we can be
here two weeks later we’re here four
weeks later here
two months later we’re here we can
improve that three or five percent
we can train the mind i believe that we
can change
now an example just last march that
really
you know brought that to my own
attention i used to be very shy very shy
painfully shy sometimes it’s hard for me
to believe i can get up in front of a
group like this and do this and i went
to my 40th college reunion
and sure enough probably 10 people came
up to me at that point said something
like joel you’re still shy
you know speak up joel can’t hear you
we can change we can change you and i
can change
but it takes practice it takes work
it takes developing a mental game plan
it takes buy-in
step one what percentage is mental step
two let’s hone in on some specific
situations
so this step three we can develop a
mental skills game plan to address that
situation
okay improvement is gradual if we’re
working on positive self-talk
if one time out of ten this week you’re
getting down on yourself frustrated but
you click in and say something like
give me the courage to do the best i can
do and you know it helps
me to be in a moment let go of that play
good it helped you one out of 10 times
this week maybe it’ll help you two out
of 10 times next week
that’s the way mental skills training
works it’s little by little by little
but when we have that game plan and we
practice it and we’re committed to it
and we’re open to talking about the
sport performance part but the
psychology part this is what i feel this
is what i think
we can improve that three or five
percent to gain what we call the mental
edge
my wish to all of you watching this is
good luck in creating those positive
sports memories for yourself
good luck in creating all those positive
memories for all those people that you
work with
good luck moving forward and good luck
in gaining the mental edge thank you
very much
everybody really appreciate it thank you