One of my favorite books, long recommended at the CrossFit Atlanta website, is Double Goal Coach, By Jim Thompson, founder of the Positive Coaching Alliance. Contained in the book is great advice from sports psychology about how to train athletes to avoid "choking." Here's a summary of Chapter 2
Chapter 2: Redefining Winner-From The Scoreboard To Mastery
Elite athletes have access to sports psychologists who are up to date with the latest research, and the goal of the Positive Coaching Alliance is to make these powerful ideas available to youth coaches in a usabel format.
One of the most powerful ideas involves a new way of thinking about what it means to be a winner.
The Scoreboard Definition of Winner
Two ways to define winner: on the scoreboard and in terms of mastery. Sports psychology literature refers to these as ego orientation and task orientation. The scoreboard orientation involves three key elements;
1. Results: If you play poorly and win, you are a winner by this definition. If you play the game of your life and lose by virtue of a lucky bounce or questionable call, you are a loser.
2. Comparison with others: the scoreboard defines who is a better person.
3. Avoiding mistakes: a focus on the scoreboard means that mistakes are not tolerated.
Problems with Scoreboard Orientation
a. Anxiety & Performance. Scoreboard orientation causes most athletes to perform less well because it increases anxiety. When we are nervous we make mistakes, we are tentative, our confidence is undercut, and we don't have fun. Scoreboard orientation causes anxiety because we cannot control the outcome. It depends on too many things outside our control.
b. Success in Life. Learning to bounce back from defeat and failure is essential to success in life.
c. Ethical Behavior. The way people think about success and winning has implications for ethics. Ego oriented (scoreboard) athletes have lower morals, poorer sportsmanship values, and greater belief that actions tending to injure opponents were legitimate. If the goal is mastery, being the best you can be, then you will be less likely to sacrifice your principles to win on the scoreboard.
The ELM Tree Of Mastery
While the scoreboard orientation focuses on results, comparisons with others, & avoiding mistakes, the concept of mastery is concerned with effort, learning & improving, and how we respond to mistakes.
Effort
All coaches say they value effort, but the great effort that fails rarely gets reinforced. If you want to increase a behavior you must reinforce it.
Learning
It doesn't matter as much where you start as where you wind up. You can't control whether you are better than someone else. You can control whether you learn and improve. Great power comes to those who focus on learning and improvement. Life is a long race. Making improvement is the secret to winning in life-define what for yourself what is important, then force yourself to get up and do it every day.
Mistakes
In a mastery orientation, mistakes are not dreaded. They are seen as part of the improvement process. You cannot learn new skills and behaviors without making mistakes along the way. The way to maximize learning is to jump into the new material you are trying to learn without worrying about mistakes.
John Wooden said the team that makes the most mistakes will probably win. The doer makes mistakes and I want doers on my team. Players who make things happen. Learning is an active process. It is not passive. Learning happens when people are actively engaged & seeking. The thing that most makes for passivity is fear of making mistakes. It is very important for the coach to explicitly make it OK to make mistakes.
Advantage of Mastery Orientation
A focus on mastery tends to decrease anxiety and fear, and increase self-confidence. Players have more fun. Increased confidence tends to make players work harder and stick to tasks longer. They are more likely to work on their own.
We are not banishing concern with the scoreboard, we are emphasizing mastery focus. Athletes are less likely to choke. They will recover faster when they are rocked by a bad performance or difficult defeat. They are more resilient.
There is a danger as the season progresses to shift focus onto the scoreboard. The imperceptible lure of the scoreboard. It may explain why mastery focus teams surprise themselves and others by going deep into the playoffs, then they succumb to the lure of the scoreboard and "choke" when they get to the dance. You gotta dance with the one that brung you.
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