Bioforce Conditioning Certification by Joel Jamieson, (05) Mental Performance, Notes

Post date: Mar 23, 2020 9:11:23 PM

Bioforce Conditioning Certification by Joel Jamieson

(05) Mental Performance

• • Building an Elite Mindset

    • There are two different mindsets people use to think about change:

      • Growth Mindset - believes that one can grow and change with practice and training.

      • Fixed Mindset- believes that you just are how you are and there’s nothing you can do about it.

    • Mindset is perspective: how you see yourself and how you see situations. When a plateau is reached, mindset determines how you react. It will determine what you will do or won’t do; whether you stick with it when things get hard or if you give up.

      • Fascinated vs. Frustrated

      • Discouraged vs. Encouraged

      • Turned Off vs. Turned On

      • When people do not adhere to the program. Is it lack of skill? Or lack of will? What are you doing to coach players who suffer from the lack of will? Many people struggle with negative self-talk. Part of developing an elite mindset requires that you stop “listening” to yourself and start talking to yourself. In other words, with the right mindset, you can overcome negative self-talk by developing the skill of positive self-talk. Self negotiation is ongoing. We can talk ourselves into doing anything or we can listen to negative self talk and be convinced to do nothing. Will you win the self-negotiation?

    • Training your mindset: Athletes and clients aren’t lacking ability, they’re blocking ability. Help them build awareness, give them the strategies they need, and provide the support to put the plan into action consistently. Changing your mindset comes down to a three step process:

      • Awareness

      • Strategy

      • Action

    • Evaluating Mindset:

      • The first step is understanding what type of learner you are working with through a “VAK” test. There are three basic types of lerners: visual, auditor, and kinesthetic. VAK Test

      • Next, ask targeted questions to determine:

        • What has made you successful up to this point in life?

        • What has most held you back from achieving your goals?

        • How important is mindset to your success and goal achievement?

        • You go to the gym to train physically, what do you do to train your mindset?

      • What you're looking for in the response to these questions is: ae thy focused on what they can control, or blaming outside influences? Do they use ‘fixed mindset’ language or ‘growth mindset’ language?

      • Finally, whether or not they a) have awareness, b) are using any strategies to improve mindset currently and c) are they taking action on this plan?

    • Elite Mindset Strategies:

      • BFS: body language, focus, and self-talk. Ask athletes, “When you’re at your best, what is your body language, focus and self-talk? When you’re at your worst, what is your body language, focus and self-talk?” Use this as an opportunity to help them become more aware of how their body language, focus and self talk can indicate

      • Self-talk test - Get on a treadmill for two one minute walk/jog tests while saying “I’m a slow lazy slug.” vs. “I’m smooth and easy. Evaluate how the different forms of self talk affected feelings and performance.

      • Visual Reminders: Write down goals and refer to them daily, look at motivation journal or videos to help get into the type of positive mindset they want to have. Elite vs. Average Mindset

      • One Word Focus: Work with the athlete/client to help them identify the one word that if they would live by each day and each moment would give them the best chance for success. Coach them to refer back to this often (and include it in your coaching) to help them focus. Find unique ways to help your clients ‘check in’ with their word each day, especially at the start of their training session and when they face struggles.

        • Discipline

        • Process

        • Energy

        • Focus

        • Consistency

        • Good

        • Breathe

    • One word reminder ideas: write it on the ball, notifications on the phone, rubber wristbands, writing the word on their shoes, etc.

  • Motivation and Commitment

    • Motivation is what gets you started. Commitment is what keeps you going: One of the most common problems that coaches and trainers have is that the people they work with are not consistently focused, motivated, and committed to a clear goal and a process to achieve that goal. So, they lose motivation and fail to achieve results.

• • Why motivation and commitment are important: Levels of motivation and commitment ultimately determine whether or not what needs to get done gets done, at the level it needs to be done at, to reach goals. Smart, small daily decisions made consistently are ultimately responsible for achievement (or the lack thereof). Teach the importance of delayed gratification and to focus on small changes over time as keys to ultimate success.

• • Two types of motivation:

    • Intrinsic - motivated by personal reward; performing an activity for its own sake rather than to earn a reward or avoid a punishment.

    • Extrinsic - motivated to earn a reward or avoid a punishment.

• • • Evaluating motivation and commitment: Evaluating motivation and commitment is done by asking targeted questions, and then listening. Look for clarity and depth in the answers, whether their ‘why’ is intrinsically or extrinsically based, how often they are on time for workouts, how often they miss workouts, what they have tried in the past, etc. Questions you can ask include:

      • What are wishing to do and accomplish by working together?

      • What are the outcomes/benefits you will receive from these goals and why are they important to you?

      • What do you see as obstacles to achieving your goals?

      • What is your plan of action when you are faced with an obstacle?

      • What has made you successful up to this point in life?

      • What has most held you back from achieving your goals?

      • What do you most need from me as your coach to help you achieve those goals?

    • Creating motivation and commitment: Strategies for creating motivation and commitment include -

      • Telescope (long term goal) -- 1 month, 3 month, 6 month, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years) and microscope goals (what do I need to do today, this week)

      • Daily and weekly success list - Helps keep track of progress

      • SMART goals

      • WOOP plans (Oetingen 2014)

      • Measurement = Motivation

      • Dopamine release (exercise, meditation, checklists, avoid addictions)

      • Start, stop, continue (weekly evaluations)

• • Focus and Awareness

    • To consistently perform at your best develop the skills of present moment focus and self-awareness. Focus is the ability to keep the mind on a task. Awareness is the ability to know what is happening around , to you, and inside you so that you can judge if you are on or off course towards your goals. Life is full of distractions. Teach students to recognize when they are not focus so they can achieve results.

    • The importance of focus and awareness:

      • The more focused you are while training, the better the training.

      • The better the training, the better the results.

      • The better the results, the more you enjoy it.

      • The more you enjoy it, the more you want to train.

    • Evaluation Strategies:

      • Eye contact in communication

      • Observation (are they “in the moment”?)

      • Concentration grid -- time to complete

      • Ask them about their signal lights and BFS (body language, focus and self talk) when at their best vs. worst.

      • Ask these questions: How often do you randomly catch yourself on your phone? Do you do any type of focus and awareness training (meditation, yoga, swimming?

    • Strategies to develop better focus and awareness:

      • Concentration grid: This tool is great to utilize for “active recovery” in-between sets. Give students a laminated grid. Using a dry erase marker, have the student mark off a specific series of numbers during the rest period. (i.e. “Start at the 003 mark and mark off as many numbers as possible in ascending order”, or simply call out different numbers on the grid and have them find the number and mark it off as quickly as possible).

• • 6-2-8 Breathing: A breathing exercise that improves focus and awareness. Inhale for 6 seconds, hold for 2 seconds, exhale for 8 seconds. Start with 3-5 ‘sets’ before training sessions or competitions. Over time, you can have students do this throughout the day on their own to refocus.

  • Signal Light Awareness: Use this to help students become more aware by recognizing what their body language, focus, andd self-talk looks like in re/yellow vs. green light situations. If they can become better at recognizing yellow/red light situations (where they’re losing control), they can implement some of these other strategies to refocus.

• • • Rubber bands for awareness: Have athletes wear a rubber band on their wrist and “snap it” to help break a bad habit (hitting snooze, negative self-talk, poor nutrition choices) or as a signal to refocus when they discover they are off task or unfocused.

    • Start, stop, continue: On a weekly basis, have your students reflect backf on the week and look forward to the week ahead to identify one thing they need to start, one thing they need to stop and one thing they need to continue in order to reach their goals. Set a specific time/day to go over this with them to keep them accountable.

    • The peak performance journal: This can be done daily or weekly, but less done more frequently is best. Questions that can be used as prompts:

      • What am I grateful for in my life right now?

      • What worked well for me today?

      • What needs improvement?

      • How was my focus towards my goals today?

      • What distracted me today?

      • What will I do next time to not get distracted?

• • Self-control and Discipline

    • If you lack self-control and discipline, you cannot make the most effective decisions and thus will not achieve your goals. Motivation gets you going, commitment keeps you going. Self-control and discipline keep you on the right course and allow you to say no!

      • Self control: your ability to be in control of your emotions, your decision-making, and your behaviors.

      • Discipline: your ability to make a decision and put off what you want in the moment for what you want most (think: delayed gratification.)

    • Why you need self-control for listen: without it you won't maximize the benefits of exercise. Results essentially come down to how consistently you can do what you need to do to reach your goals. Self-control and discipline you won't be able to do that. by helping your clients and at least develop self-control and discipline you will have them put off what they want in the moment or what they want most long-term

    • evaluation strategies:

      • track their food and workout performance are they able to do this consistently?

      • Keeps me accountable are they doing their homework do you sign them start-stop continue exercise we talked about the previous lesson

      • ask question

        • Are you having the most difficulty stopping yourself from doing?

        • Why do you keep doing that? What do you do on a daily basis to build self-discipline?

        • Finishing

    • Strategies for Building Self-Control and Discipline:

      • Make your bed

      • Identifying people, places and things plus strategize. What people places and things will negatively affect your goals? Which ones will affect your goals positively? What strategies can you put into place to remove a negative and get more of the positive.

      • Clarify your goals and track your progress

      • Clarify your start, stop and continue

      • IFTTT Plan- IF This happens Then That is what I will do.

    • Additional Resources:

      • University of Texas at Austin 2014 Commencement Address - Admiral William H. McRaven

  • Putting it All Together

    • Whether working with groups or individuals, the process is the same.It’s beneficial to address these strategies and tactics on both a large scale (team) and individual scale (each person). Have everyone doe the various mental performance ‘exercises’ together and individually

    • How to get started: Avoid feeling overwhelmed to the point where you don't apply any of this with those you’re working with. Like any other new practice, start slow. Implement one thing at a time.

      • Use Google Docs to organize all the data and to make organization and record keeping easy. This allows collaboration with each person/team in real-time. Create a folder for each student and organize all of the different mental performance strategies within it.

      • Clarity, accountability and support--approach mental performance training just like you do physical training.

      • Start with “WOOP” plan:

        • What do I really want? (Telescopic Goal) (Wish)

        • Why do I want this? (Outcome)

        • What will potentially get in my way of achieving this? (Obstacles)

        • What must I do in the next 24 hours to get me closer? (Microscopic Goal) (Plan)

      • Daily quick journal entries:

        • How was my mindset today?

        • How was my motivation and commitment today?

        • How was my focus and awareness today?

        • How was my self-control today?

    • Additional Resources: www.briancain.com