NLP sport pro

“Everything is practice” - Pelé

Brazilian born Pelé, arguably the greatest soccer player ever with a career history of 1281 goals scored in 1360 games believed that everything in his life was practice for the game. So what does practice mean to someone with such natural talent lets explore using a NLP Sports Model?

Dictionary definition: practice > verb 1 perform (an activity) or exercise (a skill) repeatedly in order to improve or maintain proficiency in it. 2 carry out or perform (an activity or custom) habitually or regularly.

Coca-Cola once ran an advertising campaign to coincide with a World Cup: ‘Eat football, sleep football, drink Coca-Cola.’ To a soccer player like Pelé, practice means eating, sleeping, and drinking football. In fact, during his career, every thought and every action, every moment of every day remained focussed on what he coined ‘the beautiful game.’ Practice was not something limited to training sessions, practice was a routine habit.

Some of Pele’s talents may have been inherited from his father who was also a professional player but at the age of five he was already practicing his skills and scoring goals in matches he played with other street kids. They had no shoes, and they had no ball either - the soccer ball was a sock stuffed with newspaper, or a melon. So, anyone believing that sports success comes easily to those born into it or from a privileged enough background to have access to all the best equipment, think on! Pelé worked as a shoe-shine boy to save enough money to buy a proper soccer ball - a good example of ‘thinking’ soccer to be able to play soccer.

Practice makes perfect
In his book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell states that it takes 10 000 hours of dedicated practice to become a world class master of a skill, any skill. That translates into 3 hours a day for 10 years, or 10 hours a day for 3 years. Just think about that for a moment - how much training time do you put in on a daily basis? Mind-boggling isn’t it? Pelé’s quote about everything being practice now becomes an important and powerful message for anyone who wants to reach the top of their game.

Mental skill practice
Sports psychology 2 promotes dedicated practice in the form of mental skills training to help get the most out of physical training. Elite athletes not only have to be at the top of their game physically to be competitive but also mentally to have that winning ‘edge’ over others. It also stands to reason that if every hour of training is purely physical, injuries are more likely to occur.

So how did a ‘natural’ talent like Pelé practice? Well, he played a lot of soccer matches for a start! His superior physical skills were the result of practicing what spectators believed to be ‘natural’ talents but the key to his phenomenal success as a player lies with his mindset. Pelé continually strove for perfection, he never sat back and rested on his laurels, he was considered “the best player in the world” throughout his career yet he always looked to achieve more - he maintained a growth mindset.

Mindset
 Fixed mindset : An athlete with a fixed mindset believes they’re stuck with their lot. They see talent or ability as just something they’re born with and, for good or bad, that’s just the way things are. In a fixed mindset, athletes are quick to judge themselves harshly when faced with defeat and will often suffer exaggerated feelings of depression or anxiety. However, if talents are seen as ‘natural gifts,’ a successful athlete might also display an exaggerated sense of superiority, and feel they’re above the need to practice.
 Growth mindset : An athlete with a growth mindset believes that change is always possible and that with dedicated effort and practice, performance can always be improved. It was Pelé’s growth mindset that allowed him to reach his full potential - and to continue pushing the boundaries of what that potential was!

Don’t let your mindset hold you back. Sports psychology 2 can help you discover what your current thinking is and, here’s the really good news, show you how to realise your own ‘Pelé power’ by developing a growth mindset of your own.

“Pelé called me the greatest footballer in the world. That is the ultimate salute to my life” - George Best

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“For those who want to know, I am a martial artist by choice, an actor by profession(which to me is an expressive revelation and/or learning of myself), and I am actualizing myself daily to be an artist of life as well” Bruce Lee

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The Best Team Won

“Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do” Pele

The ‘healthy mind, healthy body’ philosophy dates back to ancient Greek and Chinese civilisations. The study of sport psychology and how the mind affects a sportsperson’s body has developed in much more recent times but, even without such deep historical roots, it has grown quickly into a recognised and significant part of the science of sports performance.

In its widest sense, sport psychology encompasses all areas of exercise, fitness and leisure, not just competitive sport, but in terms of competition results, what are the factors that lead us to the conclusion that the best team won on the day?

The team holding the trophy are undoubtedly the winners but there’s much more to getting your hands on the prize than simply turning up on the day and hoping you play better than the other team. Without appropriate levels of fitness and physical preparation, the chances of playing well are instantly limited but equal emphasis must also be placed upon mental fitness and preparation if a top performance is to be realised.

Here are some frequently heard comments made by sports commentators:

Ÿ “He seems to be struggling to find his form today.”

Ÿ The winner, “…just wanted it more.”

Ÿ “They’re all over the place; there doesn’t seem to be any spirit in the team.”

Ÿ “There’s no sparkle; she seems to be just going through the motions.”

Ÿ “His focus would appear to be on picking fights with officials rather than on his game.”

Ÿ “That missed shot seems to have shaken his confidence; he’s struggled to regain concentration since then.”

Now here’s a list of proven sport psychology, or mental skill, techniques that can help to ensure those comments are never true of your own or your team’s performance:

Ÿ Goal Setting

Setting a course towards the ‘big event’ and progressively working through a series of lesser events, or smaller goals strategically placed in a training schedule, will ensure you achieve your peak performance when it really counts.

Ÿ Understanding Motivation

By learning what motivates you, you can prepare a training schedule that will keep you going even when the going gets tougher! Understanding motivation is an important part of the goal setting process.

Ÿ Understanding ‘Mindset’

In a nutshell, the term ‘Mindset’ describes an individual’s view of who and what they are. A person with a ‘fixed mindset’ holds the belief that they are what they are and nothing will change that. A person with a ‘growth mindset’ holds the belief that change is always possible and that nothing is set in stone. In a sports environment, a fixed mindset leaves no room for learning new skills or improving performance through making changes. It could also lead to a successful athlete resting on their laurels in the mistaken belief that they don’t need to work at their skills - as they’re a given! Promoting a growth mindset is therefore of vital importance if athletes are to thrive through continued learning and the mastering of new skills.

Ÿ Developing Team Spirit

‘There’s no I in team,’ or so the saying goes. There’s also a great comedy come-back to that line that goes, ‘But there are four in platitude quoting idiot.’ It goes without saying that an effective team must devote a large proportion of training time to the actual physical practise of perfecting their skills as a unit. However, an effective coach will also recognise the need to utilise the learned skills of goal setting and understanding motivation for each individual player if a winning team is to be formed.

Ÿ Visualisation

Learning how to visualise a positive outcome under any set of circumstances is key to preparing any sportsperson in any sport for the pressures of competition. A vision of exactly what it takes to create a winning performance must be clear in the athlete’s mind’s-eye and there should be no surprises on the day! Negative external factors such as poor weather or noisy crowds will no longer have the power to break concentration or focus when visualisation techniques, along with the ability to use positive self-talk, have been mastered.

Here’s the question, “Why are some athletes able to rise to the occasion and perform well under pressure when others seem to lose the plot?”

The answer? Ask a sports psychologist!

© Don MacNaughton 2009