NLP Sports Training and Coaching Tips for Performance Coaching

“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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Unless you’ve been living in a hole in the ground, it won’t have escaped your notice that David Beckham is injured. He’s now facing six months of rehabilitation before he’ll be back to fitness. How must he be feeling? As a professional player, football is his entire life. His every waking moment revolves around football, so what happens when there’s no football?

At any level of involvement, a sports injury that prevents you from doing what you normally do is extremely frustrating. Even if you normally just meet up with the lads for a kick-about once a week, an injury takes away your ability to play, to get some exercise, and to socialise in the process - it affects your life in many ways.

David Doermann of the University of Utah in the USA describes the emotional effects of long-term sports injury rehabilitation as being similar to the ‘five stages of grief.’

1. Denial
Especially at elite level, a sportsperson considers themselves to be ‘superior’ in terms of physical strength - it’s just not possible that they could be injured.

2. Anger
The realisation that they are injured leads to anger, a period of being angry at themselves for having allowed the injury to occur.

3. Bargaining
At this stage, an injured athlete will try desperately to speed up their return to play by attempting to bargain with absolutely everyone. They’ll plead with the physio, the coach, and passers-by in the street to be able to return to training - “if I do this exercise for a whole week, can I try playing next week?”

4. Depression
As the weeks of enforced rest continue, a player begins to feel sorry for themselves and can become increasingly withdrawn as they feel out of sorts with life. It’s at this stage, a player might lose hope of ever fully recovering and give up on their sport completely.

5. Acceptance
At this final stage of acceptance, a player realises that focussing on the physical rehabilitation process is the way forward.

To be able to make the leap from ‘depression’ to ‘acceptance’ takes considerable strength of character. The most important factor contributing to psychological acceptance - and therefore recovery - is mental skill training. Only a matter of days after surgery on his Achilles, a statement from David Beckham’s club said: “The rehabilitation plan has been established and will start immediately.” That’s the key right there, the ‘plan.’

The most effective way to recover from injury and to remain positive and motivated throughout the rehabilitation process is to use the sports psychology technique of goal setting. Just as a player uses goal setting to get them to peak match fitness, the goal setting process can also take them from injury to recovery.

David Beckham may miss out on the World Cup finals but his focus will not be on missed opportunities, it will be firmly fixed on the opportunities that are yet to come his way as he makes a full recovery.

One newspaper report read…

“If there’s one thing we’ve learnt about the man, it’s never write him off”

p.s. For more cutting edge  nlp sports coaching skills check out  http://www.sportspsychology2.com