Dr. G's FREE Mental Toughness Newsletter

IN THIS ISSUE:  

“The PARADOX of WINNING and LOSING“ – Webster’s dictionary defines the word “paradox” as a “statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable or absurd, but that may be actually true in fact.” In sports psychology there is no more important paradox that you must learn than the paradox of winning and losing. What is it? Is winning important to you? Do you truly, desperately need to win? The more a winning outcome is important to you, then the further winning must be from your consciousness and focus of concentration when it’s competition time. Want to beat that perennially tough rival of yours? Then, the further thoughts of him/her must be from your mind as the competition begins. When you think about or concentrate on winning, that is, when you keep winning close to you, the reality of it ever happening goes further and further away from you. Paradoxically concentrating on winning makes it more likely that you’ll lose. Similarly, when you dwell on beating that opponent of yours, you significantly increase the chances that he/she will beat you. Far too many athletes, coaches and parents do NOT understand how the paradox of winning works. If you fail to grasp its’ significance, then you will continue to choke under pressure and consistently steal defeat from the closing jaws of victory. In this very late issue (I apologize) of The Mental Toughness Newsletter we will address this all-important “paradox of winning.”

ATHLETE’S LOCKER - “Winning will always take care of itself!” 
PARENT’S CORNER - “It’s a copout to not focus on winning. Why else compete?”
COACH’S OFFICE – “To scout or not to scout. That is the question” 
DR. G’S TEACHING TALES “It’s not what you don’t know that brings you down. It’s what you do know!”  

ATHLETE’S LOCKER

“Winning will always take care of itself”
The two most common and costly mental mistakes that I see committed by you and your teammates, and by athletes at EVERY level across EVERY sport, EVERY day are very basic and, believe it or not, easily corrected. These two mistakes result in more heartache, disappointment, frustration, choking and poor performances than any I know of. Both mistakes fit nicely into the serious athlete’s naturally competitive nature. Correct these mistakes and you’ll be well on your way to mental toughness and performing to your potential when the heat of competition is turned way up. Continue to make these mistakes, and I can guarantee that you’ll continue to “cluck with the turkeys” rather than soar with the eagles. 

Both of these mistakes are directly related to concentrating on the outcome of the contest. The first involves focusing too much on your opponent, specifically beating him or her. The second involves concentrating too much on winning, getting a certain time, scoring “x” number of points, going 3 for 3, or any of those outcome concerns. How do these mistakes fit into the serious athlete’s naturally competitive nature? Simple! If you are anything like me on the tennis court, then you probably hate losing with a passion. Most serious athletes do! Most likely you have certain opponents that you’d really like to beat. It’s your competitiveness and sometime desperate need to win/come out on top of your opponent where the problem lies!

Too many athletes make winning so important that this is predominantly what they think about and focus on going into and during the contest. Similarly, many athletes want so badly to beat a particular opponent that they end up focusing far too much on this individual or team instead of on what they themselves are doing. Both of these concentration mistakes set you as an athlete up for failure. How?

Let’s take your opponent first. How your opponent performs, her skills, talent, strength, reputation, what she ate for breakfast, etc. is a HUGE UNCONTROLLABLE. What does this mean? You have absolutely no DIRECT control over her. Concentrating on needing to beat this opponent before or during the game, match or race will only serve to distract your focus from the important task at hand, get you physically and mentally uptight, undermine your confidence, and insure that you’ll perform with two left feet! In fact, it is this over focus on the opponent that leads athletes into getting psyched out and intimidated. 

The paradox here is critically important for you to understand. Remember the definition of a paradox: “a statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable or absurd, but that may be actually true in fact.” If you truly want to beat someone else, if you truly want to kick his/her overconfident, annoying, little butt, regardless of whether this person is an opponent, a teammate, or a pesky archrival, then you need to be sure that you focus on YOU! That’s right! TO BEAT SOMEONE  ELSE YOU MUST CONCENTRATE ON YOU. The more you focus on THEM, the less chance you will have of playing to your capabilities and actually beating them.
The same paradox holds true for the competition’s outcome. Is that championship truly important to you? Do you really want to break that school record, get the State cut or qualify for your area’s Super Bowl? If you do, then the thought of winning and achieving those goals must be the farthest thing from your mind right before and during the contest. The closer those goals are to your consciousness on game day, the farther away they will move from your grasp! Making a competition’s outcome too importance will set you up to perform tight and tentative.  

I worked with a Division I college striker who was in the midst of a terrible scoring slump. He was the team’s top scorer and one of the primary reasons that this squad was achieving so much success this particular season. However, several games went by without him scoring any goals and he began to get preoccupied with his lack of production. Before games he’d dwell on his slump and his need to score. Out on the field he’d continue to think that he needed to score. The more he focused on scoring, the worse he played and the fewer scoring opportunities emerged. The times he did have shots on goal, he was uncharacteristically way off. Want to know something interesting about this guy who is now starting for an MLS team? Whenever he played well and scored, he NEVER, EVER thought of scoring either before or during the games! 

In this most recent Winter Olympics, skating great Michele Kwan was in a solid first place going into the long program. Her goal? To win gold. She wanted to avenge her loss in the previous Olympics. She went out onto the ice thinking about winning. The result? She skated a terrible program and ruined her chances of winning gold. And what about the eventual gold medal winner, Sarah Hughes? She went into the long program in a virtually impossible-to-win-gold 4th place. She went onto the ice without any thoughts of winning and, as a result, skated relaxed and brilliantly to win the gold medal. Want to win? Then you must put winning completely out of your mind when it’s competition time.

Remember my favorite quote: 

WHEN THE ARCHER SHOOTS WITH LOVE AND PASSION FOR THE SHOOTING HE HAS ALL HIS SKILLS AND HITS THE BULLSEYE AGAIN AND AGAIN……….WHEN HE SHOOTS FOR THE GOLD, (center of the target) HE GOES BLIND!    

At game time forget winning. Forget your opponent. Instead, FOCUS ON WHAT YOU ARE DOING IN THE MOMENT. If you concentrate on yourself and playing your own game in the NOW, winning and besting your opponent will take care of itself.

PARENT’S CORNER

“It’s a cop out to not focus on winning. Why else compete?”

A 13-year-old girl was referred to me by her coach last year. As a swimmer this little girl had had a significant amount of success when she was younger. She dominated her age group as a 10 and 11 year old, winning everything she entered and attracting a ton of national attention. As she got better and better, her mother took more of an active interest in her swimming. She began staying for many of her daughter’s two hour practices, (if you don’t already know it, it’s unbelievably exciting and interesting to watch swimmers go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, ZZZZZZZzzzzzz). Soon Mom started a practice and performance logbook for the girl and memorized all her event times and precisely how far they were off the national records. It wasn’t long before Mom became more involved in the technique that her daughter’s coach was teaching her. After meets, Mom would sit down with her daughter and go over what she had done wrong and what she could correct for the next race. Gee, it’s nice that Mom was being so “helpful!” Too bad that what Mom was doing was EXACTLY WHAT YOU SHOULDN’T BE DOING if you want your child to become a champion!  

The shift was so subtle that dear old Mom never even saw it coming. Maybe Mom was just too distracted by the Olympic theme blaring loudly in her head. Maybe it was the planning of all those future endorsement deals and talk show appearances that distracted her. Perhaps Mom was just too busy being helpful and doing everything in her power to make sure that her daughter became a champion. After all, everyone had been talking about how talented the girl was and that someday….well who knows how far her talent might take her? Mom shouldn’t let all that talent go to waste now should she? 

In any case, Mom didn’t notice her daughter’s steadily growing unhappiness. She didn’t pick up on the girl’s suddenly not wanting to go to certain practices. She mistakenly thought that the problem was that now several other teammates were going just as fast. The fact that the girl was suddenly being challenged by her teammates for the very first time in her life might be a problem. Maybe it was that she was starting to lose races. I know Mom certainly had a hard time with this.   

The change started just around puberty when the other girls her age began to physically catch up to her. This little girl didn’t grow as much as her teammates did. The worse the girl performed the unhappier Mom got. She couldn’t understand why her daughter was suddenly not being “numero uno.” (This is called the real world, Mom. It is unrealistic to expect your child to win everything, all the time. In fact, it’s downright unhealthy. Not to mention the fact that losing and failure are necessary and valuable lessons for future success. Without failure and setbacks, an athlete can NEVER get stronger and become a champion).  

Mom “shared” her unhappiness with the coach. Truth be told she complained to the coach about her daughter’s “failings.” Actually the girl wasn’t really failing. She was still swimming faster than she had before. The issue was she wasn’t winning everything in sight. Therefore Mom naturally assumed that something was wrong and that the girl was failing. Unable to recognize her daughter’s success, Mom made her dissatisfaction known to the girl. Soon she began swimming slower in meets and her own frustration began to grow. Soon her frustration and unhappiness turned to tears, as she would leave her meets miserable. The slower her daughter went, the more Mom complained. She began to question the coach’s technique and strategies. After all, if her little Olympian was getting it done, it must be the coach’s fault.

t was at this point that the girl was referred to me. Mom was desperate for some answers and appeared more than willing to get help. Once I had figured out that the main cause of the girl’s unhappiness was Mom’s obsession with her daughter’s times and the race’s outcome I made a “special” call to her. I asked her if she really, truly wanted her daughter to excel in this sport. I asked her if she wanted her daughter to stay in the sport for the long haul. I even asked her if she wanted her daughter to be happy. Of course, Mom gave me the predictable, “YES!!!!!” answers. Then I explained to her:

“If you truly want your child to get as good as possible in this sport, if you truly want your child to obtain that college scholarship, if you truly want them to be happy and stay in the sport as long as possible, then there are some things that you MUST do as a parent to insure that this happens. First off, you must STOP focusing your child on outcome. The absolute worst thing for you as a parent to do with your young athlete is get them focused on winning, records, qualifying times, batting averages, MVP awards, Making the National Team, etc. When parents distract their child-athlete with this outcome focus it has the exact opposite effect that they intend. The more you focus an athlete on outcome, the less likely they will reach that outcome!”

“Second, you must stop comparing your child to her teammates and her opponents. Peak performance happens when you as an athlete focus on YOU and no one else! Concentrating on what others are doing will distract you from the task at hand, tighten your little muscles up and insure that your performance consistently reeks! Instead you should encourage your child to focus on her goals, her times, her performance and NO ONE ELSE! Remember the paradoxical nature of sport. Want your child to beat someone else? Want them to outplay and crush that real annoying parent’s kid? Well, if you do, you had better do everything in your power to get your child to focus on what he/she is doing and NOT on the opponent!”

I must admit that while I was having this conversation with Mom, I had some serious doubts as to whether she would really believe me. I’m ashamed to admit that my insecurity about this caused me to provide Mom with some of my credentials. After all, if an expert is saying all this stuff, it must be so, right? So I told her I have worked at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, I have worked with World Class and Olympic athletes. I even through in the fact that I have worked with any number of professional athletes across a number of different sports. I should have known better!

One week after my conversation she emailed me to complain about another bad meet and more bad results. Two weeks later she emailed me again and pointed out that her daughter’s times were still abysmally slow and that she had lost every one of her races. Three weeks later she “fired” me telling me, “IT’S A COP OUT TO NOT FOCUS ON OUTCOME/WINNING. WHY ELSE WOULD YOU COMPETE?”

I was glad that she had listened so carefully to what I had to say and that she had changed her behaviors so well. Ahh, what do I know anyway? I’m just an ex – spurt! 

p.s. Mom’s little girl is no longer in the sport. Another victim of “mother/father knows best and don’t tell me how to raise my child!” 

COACH’S OFFICE

“To scout or not to scout. That is the question”

As a coach there’s a fine line that you must learn to walk between getting your team adequately prepared for their upcoming contest against this tough opponent, and completely psyching them out. How well you walk this line will determine whether your coaching efforts pay huge dividends or end up as a big bust. So let’s start with a very basic question:

How important is it for you to scout your opponent?

Is it really necessary to determine your opponent’s strengths and weaknesses and take them back to your team? The answers to this question vary across coaches and sports. Some of your colleagues believe that scouting is a totally unnecessary waste of time. These coaches argue that the most important thing is to play your own game and if you do that, the outcome will take care of itself. Other coaches feel that it is completely foolhardy NOT to scout your opponent. These coaches argue that going into a game being unprepared in this way is irresponsible and a total set up for failure. What do you believe?

Last year I met with a very talented college team who was in the process of running up a string of very impressive upsets. Unfortunately for them, these guys were at the wrong end of these upsets. This squad had developed the nasty habit of stealing defeat from the closing jaws of victory against seemingly weaker opponents. What was the problem? One thing the players consistently complained about was a lack of confidence. 

Interesting enough, when they played well and dominated the game, they had no problem with their confidence. It was only an issue when the games got close and their opponents stepped up the intensity of the game. When this happened, cracks began to appear in the team’s confidence. As a result they began to play tight and tentatively. Of course, the minute the opposing team got a whiff of this, their own confidence increased and so did their level of play. Instead of being able to withstand and match their opponent’s intensity, this team appeared to crumble under the onslaught. 

To the outside observer, this made no sense. The individual athletes on this team were quite experienced, very talented players. The team itself had had some decent success in past years in their Conference as well as in the NCAA tournament. Why, then, did they continue to wilt under pressure to essentially less skilled, weaker teams? The answer came out in this athletes only team meeting.

One of the captains began bitterly complaining about the coach. Before I share with you what he said, let me be frank here. Most teams, when given half a chance, will complain about you. Most of the time when I hear these complaints I don’t take them very seriously. As a coach you are often in a no-win position with your athletes. No matter what decisions you make, one or more of your athletes are going to be unhappy with you. That’s just life on the team and life being the coach. However, I try to remind athletes that as much as they may not like you and your methods, their job as a member of your team is to play the game to the best of their ability, NOT to evaluate your coaching. However, having said that, it sometimes pays for you to listen very carefully to your athletes’ complaints before dismissing them as just “athletes being athletes.”                So the captain began, “I don’t know, but the way I see the problem is coach is always telling us before our games how good these guys are, and how if we’re not careful they’re going to kick our butts. I mean, even when they suck he says this and after a while you start believing him. We spend too much damn time thinking about our opponents and how f’en wonderful they’re supposed to be. He never tells us how good we are. He never builds us up. All he seems to do is beat us down. You know, ‘if we don’t watch out, they’ll beat us.’ I have to be honest here. I’m a senior on this team and some of these games I’ve gone into feeling completely intimidated, like I was a bloody freshman!” 

When he was finished speaking a number of his teammates loudly agreed with him.

Herein lies the biggest problem with spending too much time and energy on your opponent during your scouting/planning sessions. If you do it the wrong way you risk completely psyching out and distracting your own team. Why? 

Focusing too much on your opponent takes your concentration as an athlete away from YOU and your on-field job where it belongs. If your opponent’s skills, strengths and reputation are your primary focus going into and during a game, then you will go into that contest physically and mentally tight. Since being loose and relaxed are necessary prerequisites for peak performance, you will greatly increase the chances that you’ll choke and under perform.        

Furthermore, let’s not forget the basic paradox of beating an opponent. IF YOU TRULY WANT TO COME OUT ON TOP, THEN THOUGHTS ABOUT YOUR OPPONENT MUST BE THE FARTHEST THING FROM YOUR MIND ON GAME DAY.

Now I know a lot of football coaches would not agree with me on this one. They spend all week viewing films and preparing and effective defense and offense to shut down and overrun the competition. However, I’ve worked with enough football players in every position over the years to know that what I’m saying is true. If you make the outcome of this game too important, if you make beating this opponent too important, if you spend too much time building up your opponent’s strengths, then you actually decrease the chances that your team will be successful.

The “Wizard of Westwood,” legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden was at the other extreme of this argument. He was said to have NEVER scouted UCLA’s opponents. His attitude was very simple. He believed that if his team executed the way that they had been trained, it wouldn’t really matter what the opposing team did. In this way the focus always stayed on the players and their job, not on the opponent. Given UCLA’s 10 national championships, a lot can be said for Wooden’s strategy.         

I’m not so sure that there are many coaches today who would go into a game completely “unprepared” like Coach Wooden. However, when you do present information on strengths and weaknesses to your athletes, it is imperative that you remember not to overdo it. Keep the information concise and simple. Spend more time focusing your players on their jobs. Emphasize your team’s strengths and abilities. Communicate your belief in their ability to effectively execute against this opponent. Go easy on how great the other guys are. The fact of the matter is that if you build the opposition up too much, your athletes’ fears and negative expectations will run away with them and when that happens you can kiss a good performance “goodbye.” 

DR. G’S TEACHING TALES

“It’s not what you don’t know that brings you down, but what you do know”

There is such a funny relationship between how much you know and how well you perform. Sometimes, not knowing or being blissfully ignorant can be the best mental preparation you can have in order to perform to your potential. Simply put, it’s not what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, but what you do know. A story:

Ben was a high school sophomore and solid point scorer for his team’s varsity wrestling program. He was looking forward to a successful second year season on the varsity when he got the really bad news. His dad’s company was transferring him from California to some small town in New Jersey, somewhere on the other side of the world as far as Ban was concerned. The season had already started and Ben had even won his first three matches! How could this be happening to him? He begged and pleaded with his family to postpone the move until after the season was over, all to no avail. The family would be moving as a family and that was the end of the story. Ben was unbelievably ticked! 

His Dad, trying to make peace with his son, added, that if it would make Ben feel any better, his new high school had a pretty decent wrestling program themselves, and had even won the State Championship a few years back. This did very little to improve Ben’s attitude. In fact, he got more and more depressed as the time for the move approached. It didn’t help matters that he would be missing a huge dual match against their perennial archrivals!

For reasons that had nothing to do with the town or school, Ben instantly hated his new home. He was still so very angry with his father that he could barely speak to him. He got a chance to meet his new coaches and at least they seemed OK. His new teammates seemed like decent guys too. He began training with them and instantly his mood improved. The team was strong and the wrestlers on it were dedicated and hard working, if not fairly talented. Ben was excited for his very first match on this new squad.

The team was going against a really tough conference rival but being new, Ben didn’t have a clue. In fact, Ben didn’t even know that the guy he had to wrestle against, a senior was the defending State Champion in his weight class. It seems that the coaches and athletes came to an understanding that they were not going to tell Ben who he was wrestling against. The head coach, in fact had given every one of his athletes very strict instructions that they were to say absolutely nothing to Ben about this opponent. As a consequence, Ben approached the match without any expectations. He knew nothing about his opponent and therefore went into the match focusing on himself and what he needed to do to perform his best. Usually when Ben did this he stayed loose and wrestled well. 

The match was intense and hard fought and despite being down most of the match, Ben managed to pin his opponent to pull off the upset. Except, Ben didn’t know that this was an upset. Ben didn’t know anything except that he had just had a great match. When he looked up towards his new coaches and teammates he saw them engaged in a wild celebration. In his mind, their jubilation seemed a bit too wild. He  became puzzled. Yes, he had wrestled well. Yes he had won. OK so maybe they were really trying to welcome him to the new team. Perhaps his win probably helped his team a bit with the overall score. But there were plenty more matches left to go so his match certainly couldn’t have made the difference between winning and losing. What was going on? 

When his coaches and teammates congratulated him with back slaps and high fives he thought he heard one of the captain say, “Ben, way to go bud! You just beat the defending State Champion.” Ben was confused and dumbfounded. He had to have been hearing things. All he could say was, “What.” The captain repeated himself joined by several other of his new teammates, “Yeah Ben, that guy won the State Championships last year as a junior. You just beat the State Champion! That’s when it dawned on Ben what was really going on. They were playing with him. This was his initiation onto the team. They were going to try to get him to believe all this garbage and then he’d feel like a gullible idiot for buying into what they were saying.

“NO WAY!” He responded. “You guys are just putting me on. That was no State Champion. Give me a break!” Now, several more of his teammates enthusiastically chimed in, “Come on Ben, no kidding. You just beat the defending State Champion. This guy went undefeated last year. This is the first match he has lost in over two years! Way to go!” Ben would not give in. He was too dumbfounded. “I know you guys are just putting me on. I cane feel it.” 

The coach had been watching this interaction with quiet amusement. He whispered something to his assistant and continued to chuckle to himself watching his team trying to convince this new kid that his win was a big one. A few minutes later the assistant came back with several newspaper clippings. The coach then walked into the center of his wrestlers and said, “Hey Ben, I’ve got something I’d like you to look at.” He then handed the newspaper clippings to his new athlete. Ben’s jaw dropped as he read the headlines from last year’s local coverage of the State Championships. Sure enough, his recent opponent had indeed won States! 

Suddenly a surge of energy flooded through Ben. He started feeling hyper. His mind started racing. He couldn’t believe that he had just beaten a State Champion, and a senior to boot! He began chattering a mile a minute to his new teammates. He was in complete awe of his victory. As he looked across the mat at his defeated opponent, he had a different view of him. Despite his victory, this wrestler seemed larger, stronger and more formidable than he had just a few minutes before. Ben now knew too much! In fact, we can almost predict what would have happened to Ben if he had had this information before the match. What if his new coach wanted to adequately prepare Ben for this opponent? What if Ben was “prepared” for this State Champion’s strengths? My guess: Ben would have psyched himself completely out of the match!

Sometimes it’s better NOT to know. Often times it’s better to go into your competitions without any preconceived notions, Some times what gets you into trouble is what you do know. Why? All too often athletes take what they do know about their opponents and they use it to set limits on themselves and what they think is possible. Remember as far as performance goes, sometimes ignorance is bliss!  

IN THIS ISSUE:  

Before he actually was the greatest fighter ever, Muhammad Ali proclaimed to anyone and everyone who would listen, “I am the GREATEST!” His brash and cocky manner made him simultaneously beloved and hated by all those who knew him. While I truly admire Ali’s accomplishments and Ali, the man, his in your face, “I am the GREATEST” attitude highlights one of the uglier sides of sports today: The athlete’s EGO. A lot of athletes and coaches consider themselves to be “legends in their own minds.” This ego problem wouldn’t be so bad if athletes kept their brash and cocky attitude to themselves. As a matter of fact, most great athletes do think that they are THE BEST! This kind of inner self-confidence is actually essential to your ultimate success within your sport. What isn’t essential to your success however is telling everyone else that you’re the best! What is downright ugly and tasteless is going around acting out this internal attitude. They say that “pride goeth before a fall.” I’d have to wholeheartedly agree with this saying when it comes to sports. Acting entitled, cocky, and like you’re God’s gift to creation will alienate those around you, make you look like you’re a lousy sport and will ultimately set you up to fail. In this issue of The Mental Toughness Newsletter we will explore the wonderful world of the athlete’s ego.

ATHLETE’S LOCKER - “Ain’t I just grand?!!!!!” 
PARENT’S CORNER - “Don’t you just love the pompous jackass?”
COACH’S OFFICE – “Just say ‘NO!’ to selfish behavior!” 
DR. G’S TEACHING TALES - “Setting the ego aside for a greater good” 

ATHLETE’S LOCKER

“Ain’t I just grand?!!!!!” 

One question I will sometimes ask athletes when I get them in my office is: “So just how good are you?” Interesting enough, the answers that I get to this question vary across gender lines. Adolescent female athletes get embarrassed and uncomfortable with my asking and initially respond as if I’ve brought up a taboo subject. When pressed to answer they continue to hesitate, claiming that they don’t want to seem “stuck-up” or conceited like “some athletes” they know. I have to really push them before I can get a self-effacing, “I’m OK” out of them. It seems that the female athlete, in general has a difficult time discussing her ability and talent level, especially if she’s good. Furthermore, she has trouble separating out the difference between feeling good about herself on the inside and broadcasting this fact to the entire world on the outside. Because the latter is so distasteful to her, and she’s so concerned with how others will view her, she’s hesitant to admit to the former. 

The male athletes I ask, on the other hand, have absolutely no problem answering this question. Without hesitation or discomfort most admit that, yes indeed they are quite good, and thanks for asking!  Male athletes seem to have the exact opposite problem as females. They tend to think that not only are they quite special, but they feel that the world desperately needs to know! In other words they mistakenly believe that being confident involves opening your mouth and acting a certain way. Enter Mr. Ego.

So let’s have an honest talk about just how good you really are. First off, understand that the very best athletes in the world, the very best college, high school and even junior athletes feel that, inside, they are better than most of their competitors. Is this wrong? Is this being conceited? Do you have an ego problem if deep down you feel this way? No! No! and No! Part of being good is having the belief, that on some level you are better than those around you. Having the self-confidence to think that you will come out on top is one characteristic mark of a champion.

In fact, believing inside that you are the best is a necessary prerequisite for peak performance. Without this inner belief, you will not be able to stay calm and focused under pressure. Since being relaxed and focused on what’s important are absolutely essential to perform your best, then if you can’t stay loose and focused, you’ll never be able to reach your performance potential as an athlete. 

So what I’m saying here is that by itself, thinking that you’re the best is NOT a problem. What is a problem is when you ACT like you’re the best around others, when you feel compelled to TELL EVERYONE just how wonderful you are, and when you RESPOND to your teammates and opponents like they are some lower life form. Why?

First, and despite the fact that you may regularly see this kind of haughty, boorish, self-centered behavior on TV whenever you watch the pros play, it’s flat out wrong! Besides being tacky, this behavior demonstrates to the world that you have absolutely NO CLASS! Instead, it shows the world that you are a BIG ASS! The mark of a true champion isn’t demonstrated by simply coming out on top, time and time again.  Winning is far more than just the outcome of your game. Being a real winner is more related to how you conduct yourself in relation to your opponents, teammates, coaches and the fans. Putting others down with your words and behaviors is disrespectful and the behavior of a loser! 

Second, if you really think that you’re that great, how come: #1 you feel compelled to tell everyone around you? and, #2 you can’t stop putting down those around you? Did you ever stop to think that maybe, just maybe you don’t really believe it yourself? The athlete who is a “legend in his own mind” is frequently plagued by painful self-doubts and feelings of insecurity. If you have to use your mouth to tell everyone just how great you are, then deep down you probably don’t really believe it yourself. Furthermore, if you have a need to put others down just so you can feel a little better about yourself, then you really don’t feel so hot to begin with. Overt self-confidence and bravado are usually a mask for deep seated feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. The fact of the matter is that if you really believed that you were the best, you wouldn’t feel compelled to flap your lips or dump on others!

Third, having a big ego will get you into some serious hot water, performance wise. If you step to the line, plate or blocks with your ego on the line, that is, you’ll feel significantly diminished should you fail or lose, then you are a good candidate for choking. You will always perform your worst when you have a lot to lose. If you feel like you have to back up your words with the outcome of this game, match or race, then you’ll end up being terribly disappointed. Playing with this kind of self-imposed pressure on you will consistently send your performance directly to the outhouse. It’s a fact of sports that you’ll always do your best when you have absolutely nothing to lose. This is why you have to learn to perform without an outcome focus and without your ego on the line.

Finally, athletes who make themselves out to be better than their teammates and, therefore treat their mates as inferior or less important to the team make a serious contribution to team disharmony. “I am better than thou” behavior alienates those around you and will get you a ton of disrespect in return. In fact, people will stop appreciating your talent because they will be too distracted by your immaturity. Real winners make those around them better, NOT worse! Putting your teammates down will not only undermine their performance, but the entire team’s as well. 

So what’s the point? Feel good about yourself. Believe that you’re the best INSIDE! However, on the outside conduct yourself like a winner. Be humble! Give your teammates the credit for your good performances. Respect your opponents and your teammates. Make the people around you better. Be a class act, not a jackass! Understand that there is never any room for the outward show of ego in the game of a real winner.
PARENT’S CORNER

“Don’t you just love the pompous jackass?”

I was sitting in the first class of a graduate seminar on child psychology many years back when I began to notice that I was suddenly being overwhelmed by some “subtle” feelings of rage. The target of my heartwarming feelings was the psychiatrist teaching the course. Why was I so angry? Simply because Herr Doctor was conducting himself in the manner of a pompous ass! He was haughty, condescending and demonstrated considerable skill at making those students who dared open their mouths feel like complete morons in the shadows of his great brilliance. 

He may have thought that I was a lower life form, but I was NOT an idiot! I certainly wasn’t going to open my mouth in this unsafe environment. However, the intense rage that I was feeling was rapidly bubbling up to the danger level. I strategically kept my mouth shut as long as possible until Herr Doctor finally turned to me and asked why I was being so quiet. Then the floodgates opened. I “patiently” explained to him that while he might have a lot of good information to impart to us, his manner of presentation was “rather unfortunate.” “More specifically”, I went on, “I find you to be both condescending and infantalizing.” Stunned silence filled the room. I had done the unthinkable. I had dared challenge GOD! 

Dr. Arrogant was temporarily speechless. However, being a psychiatrist, he was well skilled in the manipulation of reality. It didn’t take him very long before he went on a counterattack and accused me of having some deep-seated psychological problem that prevented me from being committed to the class. The only psychological problem I had at the time was him and his pretentious, “Ain’t I GRAND” attitude. Although I do have to admit that his behavior did have a very close resemblance to another male authority figure that I had grown up with!             

That’s right! Let’s just blame my insolent, disrespectful behavior on my father! Isn’t that the game plan when you’re having problems with one part of your life or another? Well, my father sure taught me to “see red” whenever I was confronted by pompous, know-it-all individuals. I don’t think he meant to teach me this lesson. It’s just that he himself had a tendency towards pomposity. In fact, I grew up waiting for him to catch me and my siblings doing things wrong so that he could help us see what complete idiots we were. Personally I’m grateful that he could take the time to humiliate us whenever we didn’t have the answer to one of his questions or in some other way screwed up. It was like getting beaten up by someone wearing velvet gloves: no overt bruises but a ton of long lasting pain. But hey, this isn’t my therapy session and you certainly don’t need to listen to me whine about my past. 

What you do need to know is that I have a great deal of trouble with ego-centered, pompous, “I-am-the-best-and-you-are-nothing” individuals, and you should too! Why? Since we’re mainly talking about sports here, arrogant athletes violate the heart and soul of the game. Sport is a vehicle with which we can challenge ourselves in a number of different physical, social and mental arenas. It is a way for us to learn valuable life lessons and to grow stronger and smarter. Competitive sports are supposed to embody the notion of sportsmanship and fair play. Sport and competition in particular are supposed to emphasize the importance of team goals and needs over individual ones. The real spirit of sports is about respect for teammates and opponents.   Competitive sports also provide our kids with heroes/heroines and role models. The ego-centered, selfish athlete is no role model I would want my children following. He is arrogant, immature and disrespectful. He is a master of alienation and gives the game a bad name. Unfortunately, you will find this kind of athlete at almost every age level in sports. This is where you, as a parent come in. 

It is one of your main jobs to teach your children how to feel good about themselves without, in the process, having the need to make others feel badly. You want to simultaneously build high self-esteem while teaching a certain kind of “egolessness.” You want to teach a respect for oneself as well as a healthy respect for others. It is important that you as a parent do not collude with, or turn your back on your child’s haughty or arrogant behavior. Understand that arrogance is not a reflection of self-confidence. Feeling self-confident has absolutely nothing to do with acting arrogant. Arrogance is an interpersonal communication from me to you that I think you are in one way or another inferior to me. Self-confidence, on the other hand is a very personal “communication.” It is a message from me to me that I’m good, talented, fast, strong, etc. 

You need to teach your children that the truly confident individual uses his/her good internal feelings to make those around him/her feel better, NOT worse about themselves. How you teach this lesson is no different than how you teach your children any other important life lesson. First, and most important you need to model the behavior that you would like them to adopt. This means that you have to have the strength to take a close look at your own issues here. How confident are you? How do you communicate this confidence to others? Do you empower the people that you come in contact with, including your children, or leave them diminished? Before you can get your children to really pay attention to what you have to say about this topic, you must be sure that you are congruently “walking the talk.”

Next you have to be willing to firmly and appropriately step in when your child appears to be “trying on” the wrong kind of behaviors and attitude. If you see your child putting others down from the field or bench, or broadcasting just how great they really are, then you must intervene and use this as a teaching moment. Turning your back on this kind of behavior will only serve to reinforce it. 

Think for a moment about some of the pompous people you have come in contact with over the years. Now recall your own feelings and just how “wonderful” it was to be around them, and how you couldn’t wait to get away from them. Can you imagine what it would be like if your child’s friends, teammates, teachers, or coaches felt that very same way about him/her? Yes, that’s a bit of a horrifying thought. Start today to teach your child to be a class act when he competes, to feel good about himself and respectful of those around him, to build others up rather than tearing them down. Teach him to be confident on the inside and humble and gracious on the outside. Trust me on this one. The sporting world could use a few more class acts!

COACH’S OFFICE

“Just say ‘NO’ to “team busting” behavior!”

Whether you’re aware of it or not, there are always two different games that you simultaneously have to manage as a coach. The first one, the physical/strategic game is the one most obvious and openly taught by all coaches. This is the outer, x’s and o’s game, the one where you teach the proper technique and the right strategies both in practice and at competitions. To be successful as a coach you must have a solid knowledge of this outer game and the ability to effectively convey its vital information. This is by far the easiest game for you to manage. Most coaches, however, believing this to be the only “important” game, mistakenly think that their coaching duties end here.

The second game that continuously goes on whether you choose to pay attention to it or not is the interpersonal or inner game. This is the “game” of team dynamics, of how your athletes interact with each other, of the spoken and unspoken pecking order on the team, of the cliques, alliances and scapegoating that occurs. Much of the inner game gets played out in subtle ways both on and off the field. If you don’t consciously look for this game within the game you’ll most likely miss it entirely. If this should happen, then chances are good that you’ll be less successful with your athletes, regardless of your coaching expertise and their level of talent. 

How well you coach the inner game will determine how well your athletes play together, or their level of team cohesion. Since much of your ultimate success as a coach lies with your ability to get a wide variety of diverse and sometimes-conflicting personalities to mesh together and play as one, it is worth your while to spend some of your coaching energies working with this “inner” game. What do I mean?

Think back to a past experience when you had a group of really talented athletes who just couldn’t seem to get along together. Despite the fact that your team may have had the potential, talent-wise to win Conference or go all the way, they squabbled amongst themselves the entire season and ended up being significant underachievers. Perhaps there were rumblings of conflicts and fights behind the closed doors of the locker room. Maybe there were some ego problems on the team with one or more athletes acting entitled and arrogant and picking on their less talented teammates. There may have been an undercurrent of jealousy directed at several of the starters. Perhaps there were a few selfish athletes who refused to put the needs of the team in front of their own and didn’t care if their behavior or choices jeopardized the team’s chances at success. Most likely there was a definite lack of trust among team members. Whatever the specifics were, the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the inner game both drained the intensity and diverted the focus from the outer game leading to consistently disappointing results.

As a coach, how many times do you remember seeing signs of this inner game turmoil and then deliberately choosing to ignore them? While you may initially feel uncomfortable looking at these inner game issues, they constitute an important part of your job. It’s critical that you learn to teach  and set limits around appropriate and inappropriate team behavior. When you fail to do this, one or two “bad apples” can sabotage all your hard work and the entire season with their behind the scenes “team-busting” behavior. This is especially true when you’re coaching women, who are naturally more tuned into and concerned with the social climate and interpersonal goings on of the team. When you think, “If I don’t see it, I can’t do anything about it” you are kidding yourself!

You need to make use of your instincts and “radar” to tune into your team’s interpersonal dynamics. Probably the most effective way to do this is by making use of your captains. This is assuming that you have captains who you can trust and who you’re quite confident are NOT part of the problem.  A good captain will have his/her finger on the pulse of the team and will be able to help you understand what is really going on both on and off the field. In addition, good captains can also be part of the solution, helping you model appropriate “team building” behaviors as well as reinforcing your limits on what athlete behaviors you won’t tolerate. 

If you are unfortunate enough to have ineffective captains or those who are part of the problem then you can try to enlist the aid of your assistant coaches to help you open a window into the team’s inner game. If you don’t have the luxury of assistant coaches, then the responsibility for working with the inner game falls squarely in your lap.   

So what kind of “team busting” behavior should you be on the lookout for? Arrogance; Jealousy; Scapegoating; Selfishness; and the in-group Cliques of the starters vs. non-starters. When left unchecked, these ego-related behaviors can do considerable damage to your program. It is interesting that much of this behavior is a product of low self-esteem. It’s the insecure athlete that is more likely to act arrogant, jealous and selfish. It’s also the insecure athlete that will simultaneously invest a tremendous amount of his/her energy in getting into the “in group” while trying to keep certain teammates out. 

As a coach, you need to let your athletes know quite clearly and firmly that there is absolutely no place for those kinds of behaviors on your squad and that you won’t tolerate them. Having said that, you then need to be able to back up your words with consistent action should you begin to see these kinds of behaviors sneaking into the team’s dynamics. You have to be willing, if necessary, to even bench one or two of the offending parties, regardless of whether they are the team’s top producers. If the behaviors don’t change, then you have to be able to let those athletes go from your squad. 

As you are probably well aware, being effective as a coach is never a simple case of just teaching x’s and o’s. You also have to be willing to look for and work with your team’s interpersonal dynamics. Without direct and consistent work with your squad’s “inner game”, you’ll end up losing control of the outer one.                         

DR. G’S TEACHING TALES

“Setting the ego aside for a greater good”(The following story was gotten from www.inspirationalstories.com)

At a fundraising dinner for a school that serves learning-disabled children, the father of one of the school's students delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After extolling the school and its dedicated staff, he offered a question.

"Everything God does is done with perfection. Yet, my son, Shay, cannot
learn things the way other children do. He cannot understand things as other children do. Where is God's plan reflected in my son?" The audience was stilled by the query.

The father continued. "I believe that when God brings a child like Shay into the world, an opportunity to realize the Divine Plan presents itself. And it comes in the way people treat that child."

Then, he told the following story:
Shay and his father had walked past a park where some boys Shay knew were playing baseball. Shay asked, "Do you think they will let me play?" Shay's father knew that most boys would not want him on their team. But the father understood that if his son were allowed to play it would give him a much-needed sense of belonging.

Shay's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shay could play. The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates.  Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said, "We are losing by six runs, and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our
team and I'll try to put him up to bat in the ninth inning."

In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shay's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. At the top of the ninth inning, Shay put on a glove and played in the outfield. Although no hits came his way, he was obviously ecstatic just to be on the field, grinning from ear to ear as his father waved to him from the stands.  In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shay's team  scored again. Now, with two outs and bases loaded, the potential winning run was on base. Shay was scheduled to be the next at-bat. Would the team actually let Shay bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game?

Surprisingly, Shay was given the bat. Everyone knew that a hit was all but impossible because Shay didn't even know how to hold the bat properly, much less connect with the ball. However, as Shay stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shay could at least be able to make contact. The first pitch came and Shay swung clumsily and missed. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shay. 

As the pitch came in, Shay swung at the ball and hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shay would have been out and that would have ended the game. Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field, far beyond reach of the first baseman. Everyone started yelling, "Shay, run to first. Run to first." Never in his life had Shay ever made it to first base. He scampered down the baseline, wide-eyed and startled.  Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!"

By the time Shay was rounding first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman for a tag. But the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions had been, so he
threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head.  Shay ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled the bases towards home.  As Shay reached second base, the opposing shortstop ran to him, turned him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third!"

As Shay rounded third, the boys from both teams were screaming, "Shay! Run home." Shay ran home, stepped on home plate and was cheered as the hero, for hitting a "grand slam" and winning the game for his team. "That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face," the boys from both teams helped bring a piece of the Divine Plan into this world."

IN THIS ISSUE: 

To QUIT or not to QUIT, that is the question. Whether t'is better in the battle to hang by thy nails and refuse to give in or to allow the blissful ease of non-effort and whimp-dom to wash over thee. Drum roll please. mmmmmMMMMMMM. Bring on the clichés! When the going gets tough, the tough get going. The only real failure is in no longer trying, in quitting. Never quit. Never, ever, ever quit! and, of course, my all time favorite. A quitter never wins and a winner never quits! Now that you're unbelievably inspired, lets talk reality. When are these clichés just a lot of meaningless, motivational hot air spewed out by a bunch of frustrated adults who have exhausted their I can be helpful repertoire and have nothing more useful to say? When is quitting not only OK, but also absolutely essential to an athlete's further growth and development? And, to be fair to my motivational roots, when are these words of determination and stick-to-it-ness right on and meaningful? When should you really suck it up, face your frustrations, quit your whining and hang in there? The word quitting has such negative connotations attached to it that far too many athletes, coaches and parents go out of their way to avoid it at all costs. They equate quitting with failure and with being a total loser. Unfortunately this is an unbelievably shortsighted way of approaching such a complex issue as leaving your sport. The reality here is that quitting is rarely just a simple black or white issue. There are often many shades to this topic and my intention is to illuminate some of them in this June/July 2002 issue of the Mental Toughness Newsletter. Whatever you do however, don't you dare quit reading this issue until you've finished every last word. Remember what they say about quitters now.

ATHLETE'S LOCKER - When you should never use quitting as an option.
PARENT'S CORNER - When it's time for your child to leave his/her sport.
COACH'S OFFICE - Don't you ever quit on your kids!
DR. G'S TEACHING TALES - When things look the darkest, open your eyes and look for a light. 

ATHLETE'S LOCKER

"When you should never use quitting as an option"

First off, let's get one thing straight: Quitting is not always quitting. What do I mean by this confusing double speak? Simple! There's a big difference between leaving your sport at the right time for the right reasons and prematurely giving up for any number of wrong reasons. When you do the former you're being smart, clear thinking, possibly courageous or all of the above. This is not quitting in the true sense of the word. This is not being a loser regardless of what a coach or parent might say to you about it. However, when you do the latter and leave too early, you may be acting stupidly self-destructive, taking the easy way out, allowing your frustrations to run the show, robbing yourself of an opportunity to be successful later on down the road or all of the above.
 
Let's face it; training seriously in your sport is a very difficult task. If you do it the right way and are committed to hard work and the pursuit of excellence, then one thing you can count on occasionally running into along the way is the urge to bag it, to give it all up, to pack it all in, to just flat out give up and quit.

Why? There are obvious reasons: First off, getting good in any sport is like traveling a road with tons of potholes and obstacles on it. Sooner or later you're going to stumble into one of those potholes or obstacles and go down hard. Sooner or later you're going to get tripped up and bruise yourself or swerve to avoid a big one and accidentally drive yourself off the road into a tree. There is no smooth sailing in sports. If you think that your career should go as planned, then you're living large with Mickey Mouse in that fantasy world down in central Florida. Understand that to be successful you must and will crash, sometimes once, most likely a whole lot more. When you do crash, you'll end up losing. You will get injured. Coaches will probably under appreciate or ignore your talents and efforts and plant your butt on the bench. Frustration will at times become your closest friend. In short, you will end up suffering. 

Important note to all athletes: Nothing worthwhile that you will ever do in your life can come without one form of suffering or another. Victory without suffering is hollow and personally meaningless. Glory without hardship and adversity is truly empty. It's the suffering along the road that makes the journey so rewarding in the end.

As an athlete, expect that this suffering will sometimes show up as a crisis in confidence, as a time when you're plagued with massive self-doubts or a fear that maybe you're just not up to it. This crisis may be coach generated. You may have a coach who you can't get along with or whom you think is incompetent, mean or just plain unfair. The crisis may be caused by a slump or string of disappointing or frustrating performances. The end result is that suddenly you've lost that fire, your determination to stay the course and now you're thinking the unthinkable: Maybe I should quit! Perhaps I don't have what it takes. Maybe I've had enough!
 
When you get to the place of wanting to quit just because things aren't going your way, take a moment to step back and catch your breath. Quitting out of frustration because
suddenly the road has gotten rocky is not the right reason or the right time to pack your bags and head home. Quitting because of repeated failures is not a good enough reason either. Repeated performance problems, slumps or fears, in general should never fuel your departure from the sport. Yes, they are frustrating. Sure, they're driving you to distraction. However, bailing out just because you're not doing well or struggling is flat out wrong.

Similarly, leaving because of a lack of playing time or problems with your coach is not usually a good reason. (This is not to say that sometimes playing for a particular coach can be unbelievably destructive. At times, coaches are directly at the root of an athlete's unhappiness and poor performances. These coaches are demeaning and demoralizing. They kill an athlete's love for the sport and undermine
his/her self-esteem. They refuse to take responsibility for their destructive behavior and instead, blame the athlete. They aren't open to constructive feedback and play head games with the athlete and his/her teammates. In these kinds of situations where the relationship between the coach and athlete is clearly unhealthy and destructive to the athlete, then it is almost always in his/her best interest to remove him/herself from the situation.) Understand that your coaches will frequently do things that you disagree or have problems with. 
 
You will always be able to find fault with the coach's behaviors and decisions. What you have to learn to do in these situations is to play the role that's been assigned to you by the coach to the very best of your ability. You may not like the role but that's your job on the team. Your job isn't to evaluate or criticize the coach and his/her decisions.

The decision to leave your sport is best made when you can think clearly without discouragement and emotions being your closest advisors. Quitting should be a well thought out decision that comes from having spent ample enough time taking a close, hard look at where you are and where you really want to go, from examining the issue from every possible angle. A hasty, emotional decision to quit is usually a wrong one. Why? Because when we make decisions based on emotions we can always count on those decisions not being weighed down by intelligent thought. An example:

Sheila Taormina, an internationally ranked triathlete once told me that she quit her quest for a spot on the US national swim team and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics at least 8 times! At the end of a long, particularly discouraging and frustrating workout she realized she was simply kidding herself and should grow up and stop wasting her time chasing unrealistic childhood dreams. You see, Sheila had never even made the finals at an Olympic Trials before, having failed in her two previous attempts. Here she was, a good 27 years old when she started this, her last quest (a dinosaur in the eyes of all the experts) and had only 12 year olds and her old age-group coach to train with! Her doubts and frustrations would come in waves and were, at times overwhelming. So were the odds. Most people in the sport thought she was absolutely crazy to be pursuing such a foolish dream. So when the going got rough, she'd keep quitting.
 
Every one of those eight times that she quit in tears, left the pool and vowed to never return, she'd somehow find herself back in the water or gym the very next day after having sat with her decision overnight. At the 1996 Olympic Trials she edged out Janet Evans to improbably make the last available position on the Olympic Team. In Atlanta, her relay team won a gold medal and Sheila was suddenly an Olympic Gold medallist. It's a good thing Sheila kept quitting on quitting.

There are times that leaving your sport is probably the best and healthiest option available to you. If you're no longer having fun, have lost your passion and no longer get any pleasure from playing and competing, then perhaps it's time to pack your bags and try something else. Or maybe you're in a situation where your primary role on the team is a non-participatory one. You are a permanent fixture on the bench and it doesn't look like your role will ever change in the near   or even distant future. If you participate to play and are not, I see no problem with you changing programs so that you will get to play. This is a dilemma that many top high school athletes face after they sign with a good, Division I program. Not only will they see limited to no playing time as a freshman, but also, because this program recruits only the very best athletes in the country, chances are good that they will rarely get to play over their entire four years. In this kind of a situation the athlete has to seriously weigh whether they want to not play during their college career.

I am all for athletes accepting and playing their role to the very best of their abilities for the good of the team. However, having said that I am also quite realistic. I find nothing wrong with that same athlete finding another program where they will be happier and have more of an opportunity to participate and compete. Your sports career does not last forever. Very few athletes will ever make a successful professional career out of their sport. Add to this fact, the concept that sports are supposed to be fun for you, and I see no problem with making a decision to switch teams so that you can continue to have fun by participating and not sitting on the bench.
 
Keep in mind, however, that I am not advocating that you pack up and leave just because the going gets rough. This I view as copping out. Dealing with hardship, adversity and challenge in your sport and life is what will ultimately make you a better, stronger person. Get in the habit of moving towards, not away from these unpleasant experiences. And above all, think long and hard before you decide to leave.
 
And if you do quit, hold your head up high. Quitting for the right reasons is no cause for shame or embarrassment. Trust yourself and your instincts here. If you've thought about it and leaving makes the most sense, then leave feeling good about yourself, regardless of what anyone else may say.

PARENT'S CORNER

When it's time for your child to leave his/her sport

The father painfully explained to me: You see if he quits now, he'll just keep quitting in every situation that he finds himself in. When things don't go his way, he'll just want to leave. I'm really nervous about him learning that his life.

Dad is referring here to his 8 year old son who wanted to stop playing baseball because the coach yells and screams at us whenever we mess up and it makes me cry. His little boy was miserable about playing baseball. He was now afraid to go to practice and he hated games even more. It seemed that the coach became more anxious and therefore even more out of control in game situations.

Is Dad right here? Should he really worry that if he lets his son quit in this situation that it will start an unhealthy precedent where the boy will always choose quitting as his primary method for coping?

First of all, understand that one of your primary jobs as a parent is to be able to keep your children's sports in perspective. You need to remember that sports are just an arena for your children to have fun and hopefully learn some healthy and valuable life lessons. Sports should not be viewed as larger than life, regardless of how talented your child may be. Part of keeping this perspective is in being able to continually ask yourself, What do I really want my child to learn in this situation? Because of this, it is useful for the father to be concerned about the life lesson his son may or may not be learning by quitting the team.

However, as a parent, it is also your primary job to be able to protect your children, to keep them physically and emotionally as safe as possible while they grow up. If you think that your child is in a physically or emotionally abusive situation with a teacher, coach, priest or other adult who is supposedly in charge of teaching, guiding or otherwise mentoring your offspring, then it is your right and obligation to immediately step in and take active steps to remove your child from the danger.

Having a coach who makes 8 year olds do wind sprints and pushups for punishment whenever they commit errors in practice, who yells and screams at them in games, who embarrasses them in front of their peers is having your child in a seriously abusive situation. The fact that your child may want to quit this unhappy environment is excellent reality testing on his/her part. Why should an 8 year old or any aged child stay in this kind of abusive environment? This father should not worry about his boy learning that quitting is the best way to handle any kind of adversity because this isn't adversity. What this coach is doing is called abuse. Not only should dad immediately pull his son from this team and ideally find another one for him to participate on, but he should also directly confront the coach in an attempt to get him to change his destructive, demeaning behavior. If this doesn't work, then the father should immediately report this coach to league officials. Children should never have to deal with out-of- control, abusive adults who masquerade as coaches, teachers, priests, etc.
 
Please do not worry about the life lessons that quitting such an abusive situation may teach your child. The more important lesson you want him to learn here is that you will step in and protect him when he is at risk. This will then teach the youngster that not only will his parents be there for him should he need them, but he'll also learn that it is unhealthy for anyone to stay in any kind of abusive situation. Telling your child that life is hard and that he needs to learn to quit whining and just suck it up is a good way to teach him that you have no understanding or compassion for his feelings, that you won't protect him when he's in trouble and that remaining a victim in an abusive situation is the strategy of choice. These are not valuable life lessons.
 
Furthermore, the argument that life is not fair and that we should start early to learn how to deal with mean, destructive people is lost on me when we're talking about kids. Sure there are an overabundance of wickedly stupid, abusive people in the world. Naturally many of these gems of humanity find themselves in positions of leadership and power. However, it's one thing for an adult to have to deal with a weekly ration of self-esteem bashing by a stupid, insecure boss or co-worker. It's a completely different situation when the abuse is directed at a child. At least as an adult you have additional resources, strengths and skills to be able to understand and effectively handle bullies.

Kids, on the other hand are helpless and vulnerable. They do not understand the reason why an adult would be treating them so badly. Instead of being able to see that their coach is an idiotic, terrible jerk, they get into believing that the mistreatment is a direct product of something that they have done wrong, (i.e. drop a ball, strike out, throw the pass out of bounds, etc.) and so feel on some level that the abusive is their fault. Please! I implore you. Help your child understand the difference between appropriate coaching and abuse and do not let them remain unprotected in abusive situations.
 
Remember also, when it is time for your child to quit you want to help him feel good about his decision and not label quitting as a weak choice. In the situations that we've been discussing here, quitting is a strong, healthy choice.

COACH'S OFFICE

Don't you ever quit on  your kids!  

The game wasn't going as planned. The game wasn't going as practiced. As a matter of fact, it wasn't going in any way that it should have gone.  It was, in plain English, a spectacularly ugly affair, totally unrecognizable to the coach or anyone watching who knew this team. I suppose that if you coach long enough, sooner or later you're going to run into one or more of these heart-warming, gratifying kinds of days, even with a good team. Things just don't seem to work out. No matter what you try, your players seem to be playing with two left feet, stone hands and prehistoric reflexes. They are out of step, out of sync and totally out to lunch. Their timing is way off and they can't seem to execute, even if their lives depended upon it. This is exactly what was happening now as the coach did a slow burn from the sidelines.
 
Truth be told, the coach couldn't believe what he was seeing. His feedback, no matter where it was directed, seemed to fall on deaf ears. It was as if he was suddenly speaking a foreign language and no one could understand him. Perhaps that's why he gradually began to increase the volume of his voice and sprinkle his instructions with colorful words and phrases that I can't repeat here. Maybe he thought that the increased volume and choice vulgarity would somehow get his message across better. Certainly that would explain why the veins on his neck and forehead were bulging so and his face had taken on an interesting, bright red hue. As the game dragged on, the players on his bench gradually inched further and further away from him in fear. Soon his two assistant coaches had become strangely and uncharacteristically silent. The calm before the storm?
 
And that's when it finally happened. It was just about midway through the third quarter. He just simply snapped, not unlike a balloon that's been pumped with just a little too much air finally explodes. I'm not sure what the final straw was. One more stupid mistake on a day chock filled with them. One more broken, unrecognizable play. Another dropped ball. No one listening? Who knows? All I know is that I saw the clipboard break in half on his knees before I heard the loud snap. During the ensuing timeout he blasted his team. He used every derogatory phrase he could think of and then some. He would have made an Army drill sergeant blush. He called them losers and quitters. He told them in all the years he'd coached, he'd never seen a game played as bad as the one they currently in. He questioned their manhood and challenged their toughness. He told them that he was completely embarrassed that he was their coach. His foaming at the mouth tirade made me flinch.
 
Now some more sensitive souls in critiquing the coach's comments might think he made a complete fool of himself and no one else. Others listening might self-righteously believe that his players deserved everything that they got from him and that his tirade was necessary. I'm not so sure that it's ever necessary or justified to act that way as a coach. No game is ever worth that much.
 
Call it what you want. The coach emotionally lost it. And that's when, in my opinion, he really screwed up. He quit on his players. He just walked off the field mumbling something about the team being so bad that they didn't really need a real coach anymore, especially if they weren't going to listen to what he had to say. What they really needed was a janitor to clean up all the shi!?!**%$ because the smell here is so bad. His players stood there speechless as he headed for his car in the adjacent parking lot and drove away! An inspiring motivational move on his part! If I was on the team I'd sure be ready to get my act together now.
 
So when the going gets tough, the tough get going? Is that what this coach was modeling for his players and fans? The way to overcome adversity is to hang in there and persevere? A winner never quits and a quitter never wins? Right! Is this semi-temper tantrum some kind of sophisticated psychological intervention that will miraculously motivate his players to greater performance heights? I think not! I think that the coach just temporarily misplaced his functioning brain cells and let his Reptilian brain take over! Nothing more. Nothing less. He lost it emotionally and then he quit on his players. He abandoned them. Not so surprisingly, the team continued to stink the place out for the rest of the game. Truth be told, they actually got worse, given how distracted they were that the coach had left them.
 
I've seen basketball coaches leave the bench and go up into the stands during a game because they couldn't stomach what they were seeing out there on the court, gymnastics coaches walk off the floor right in the middle of a gymnast's routine because they were displeased with the quality of their gymnast's performance, swim coaches leave the pool deck while their athlete was still swimming because her splits were so slow, a skating coach turn her back to the ice just as her skater went by to express her displeasure with the athlete's poor excuse for a program and a football coach rip up the game's playbook before disgustedly leaving the field in the third quarter because his team's play was so bad. What we have here is a new motivational cliché for coaches: When the going gets rough, the coach makes like a tree and leaves!
 
Help me out here please. Is it that I'm terminally too nice? Am I missing an important point here in believing that leaving your athlete or team when they're struggling is immature, insensitive and stupidly counterproductive? Is my problem that I never learned the motivational value of a good temper tantrum sprinkled with a dash of humiliation and embarrassment? What's my problem?
 
As a coach I don't have to tell you how critical it is for an athlete of yours to never, ever give up. You are probably well aware that persistence in the face of adversity is the secret to success. Those who quit or prematurely turn back from this adversity rarely get to enjoy the thrill of victory. Those who persist, even if of lesser skill or lower talent level than an opponent will ultimately accomplish their goals and emerge on top. So if this is true for the athletes, why should it be any different for coaches? Quitting your team because things are getting frustrating is a sure-fire recipe for failure and teaches your athletes the wrong lessons about persistence and hanging in there.
 
As a matter of fact, tenacity and dogged determination is such a rare and valued commodity that it can't always be taught to athletes. Coaches can talk about the importance of relentless persistence. They can encourage the pursuit of hard work and a never-say-die attitude. They can even model these characteristics in all their interactions with their players. However, this does not guarantee that the athlete will adopt them.
 
Quitting on the other hand can be easily taught. I think it's far simpler to train someone to consistently take the easy way out rather than the more difficult one. The primary method that coaches employ to do this with their athletes is never so much in what they say as in what they do with them on a day-to-day basis. Modeling is by far one of the most powerful teaching tools available. You teach far more in how you are than in what you say. It's the old cliché, I can't hear a word that you're saying because your behavior is speaking too loudly.
 
So before you decide to let your emotions run the ship and sail away in the middle of your team's game or performance, ask yourself the following questions What do I really want my athletes to learn from this intervention/interaction? Is this the best way for me to teach them this lesson? Is this lesson consistent with what I am modeling in my behavior of leaving?
 
I'm not naive. It's not realistic, nor even healthy for you to keep a Mary Poppins-like smile on your face at all times. Even the best coaches get angry and frustrated with their athletes from time to time. The key issue here is what do they do with their frustration and anger. If you can't find a way to constructively channel it then you're better off sitting on it and keeping it to yourself. Otherwise you risk making a fool of yourself and losing your team's respect. The very last thing that you want your athletes doing is quitting, so why model for them what you don't want them to do?

DR. G'S TEACHING TALES

When things look the darkest, open your eyes and look for a light.

Don't go it alone. When you repeatedly stumble and fall, look for help. When your frustrations have reached epic proportions and you're ready to pack it all in, don't give up yet. Don't quit! Get help! Winners make use of all the resources available to them. You don't have to struggle alone. Be smart about this. Why re-invent the wheel? Go ask people who have already been down that road and know where the potholes, bumps and dead ends are.

She was a high school All-American. She was an unbelievably talented runner with a passion for running. She loved to train and never experienced it as work. While teammates bitterly complained about tough workouts she would smile and attack those training sessions as if she were a kid that had just been let loose in her favorite toy store. She was a coach's dream: A great all around person, highly coach-able, self-motivated, goal driven and willing to do whatever it took to become successful. Her attitude, work ethic and love of the sport carried her all the way to Cross Country Nationals as a senior. She was seriously looked at by a number of Division I schools, but instead chose to attend a D-II school out west.

Freshman year went well. She was all conference in XC, Winter and Spring track and was awarded the rookie of the year. Sophomore year she lit things up and won conference in cross-country and then won Nationals! As a consequence, shewas suddenly thrust into the national limelight. She got written up in a number of national publications, including Sports Illustrated and then the media began to show up on campus and at her races. Everywhere she went people began to recognize her. At races people feared her. She was a little surprised and embarrasses by all this attention. She didn't know it, but this was the beginning of the end for her. This was when all the problems started.

She went into the winter track season after winning XC Nationals with a completely different headset than she had ever had before. For the first time in her career she felt that she was under a tremendous amount of pressure. She had all these new expectations that she felt she had to live up to. She worried about letting her coach and teammates down. She worried about what the kids back at school would say if she didn't win. She began to entertain the what if's before her races.  Anxiety and runaway nervousness started to crowd out the enjoyment that had always been an integral part of her running. This only got worse as Winter Nationals approached. She felt like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. Everyone expected that she would win. She couldn't sleep for the week leading up to the 2mile. By the time race day rolled around she was sick to her stomach. She threw up before the race's start. Filled with dread, all she wanted was for the race to be over. Despite getting a great start and leading for the first half of the race, she tightened up in the second mile and finished a disappointing 15th with a time that was much slower than normal for her. She returned to campus embarrassed and confused. How could this have happened to her?

She continued to enjoy training but a new feeling seemed to creep into all her races during spring season. She just couldn't seem to shake the experience at Nationals. That same sense of anxiety and dread was always waiting for her before all of her more important races. While she continued to do just fine in the less important dual meets, bigger meets were a completely different story. They were no longer fun. Furthermore, she'd always seem to get too nervous pre- race, tighten up and then die midway through the event. Despite qualifying for Nationals in spring track in the 2 mile, she felt her season had been one disappointment after another. Once again, she went into Nationals with that same tight and pressured feeling. Vivid images of winter nationals kept crowding into her mind. Despite being one of the fastest runners there, she again ran a slow time and finished way out of contention. Her frustration and unhappiness grew as sophomore year ended and she began to prepare for junior year and the fall XC season.

Unfortunately, junior year was even more frustrating and upsetting. Always running well in the less important races, she'd tighten up and fall apart in the bigger ones. Her sense of dread as she approached those races was becoming unbearable. In both XC and winter nationals she choked badly, throwing up before each race and running far slower than her ability. It was immediately after winter Nationals, junior year that she finally made her decision. 
She was through! She'd had enough. Running was no longer fun. She was performing poorly. There was nothing but frustration and heartache in the sport for her now. It was time to pack it all in. Oh, she'd continue to run for fun, she explained to herself and her coach, but there was no way she could do the competing thing anymore. She was just too tired of letting herself and everyone else down. Besides, her confidence was at an all time low and there was absolutely no point in torturing herself any longer. Quitting was the only way to go.

No one can call this athlete a quitter. She was a dedicated, hard working committed athlete. No one worked harder than she did. She was a fierce competitor. However, everyone has a limit and she had reached hers. Why should you hang in there when your sport no longer brings you the happiness and satisfaction it used to, but instead nothing but heartache? When the passion goes isn't time for you to do the same? Well, yes and no!
 
If you lose the passion and stop having fun in your sport, you have to ask yourself, Why? What's changed? What's different? If you are on top of your game and you stop having fun that's one thing. You've reached all of your goals. You're tired, bored or just simply want to try other things. Quitting under these circumstances is fine in my book. However, if you are quitting because of repetitive performance problems and the frustration they bring with them, then I think you are making a mistake. This is the wrong reason to bail out. Why?
 
Leaving your sport when you're frustrated robs you of the opportunity to solve the problem. That's right! I said, solve the problem. Believe it or not, many times there are solutions to these performance difficulties. Usually they are a direct result of your using bad mental mechanics. If your focus of concentration is off, if you get too nervous before and during your games, if you can't control the negative self-talk that's whispering sweet nothings in your ear while you're trying to perform, then you will continue to struggle performance-wise. Understand this! Once you learn to change your faulty mental mechanics your performance will return to normal.
 
When she reluctantly called me on the phone it was just to keep her coach happy. She had agreed to try talking with someone but inside she knew it was pointless and that quitting was her only option. She was totally taken aback when I asked her if she'd be surprised at how quickly she'd get over the problem. Just because you think that there's no solution to your problem doesn't mean that there isn't one out there waiting for you. When you're stuck and struggling you almost always need an outside perspective to get yourself back on the fast track.
 
The good news: After she explained her history and problem to me it became clear that her performance difficulties were completely related to mental mistakes that she was making both before and during her races. She was putting too much pressure on herself. She was much too focused on outcome and results. She was overly concerned with how others would view her and too worried about her competition beating her. When your focus is off in this way it will be impossible for you to perform to your potential. Furthermore, this kind of concentration will guarantee that you are much too nervous and physically tight to do your best. In order for you to perform to your capabilities you must focus on YOU, keep your concentration in the NOW and be able to stay loose and relaxed under pressure.
 
These concepts and mental skills are relatively easy to learn. Within a short amount of time she was back training with her team feeling more comfortable and happier. With a new, improved focus she ran well in her first race back. The nervousness and dread began to disappear.  As her concentration improved, so too did her other performances. Armed with the ability to stay calm under pressure, her confidence grew. She started to enjoy racing again. At her last Nationals, the race that had caused her so much heartache and disappointment in the past, she was able to stay relaxed and focused, the first time since freshman year! She finished in the top 4, had fun at the meet and ended her career on an up note. More important, she learned a number of valuable lessons about mental toughness and quitting.
 
When the going gets rough…stick around a bit!

IN THIS ISSUE: 

"KILL THE UMP! - Everything you always wanted to know about the umpires, referees and officials but were too afraid to ask. Sports would not be sports without rules and regulations. These rules and regulations would not be worth a wooden nickel without well-trained people, dressed in their appropriate striped uniforms, who knew these rules and could consistently and fairly enforce them. If the rules of your sport weren't fairly and consistently enforced, think of the chaos and anarchy that would result on the fields and in the stands. So let's offer some heartfelt thanks to the refs, umps and game officials who, despite the fact that they are so well paid per game, (NOT!! We couldn't even begin to afford to pay them what they are actually worth for all the abuse that goes with the job) still show up with their game faces on to do a dirty, thankless job. In this issue of The Mental Toughness Newsletter we will take a closer look at the often emotional topic of the referee, who is the coach's, athlete's, parents' and fan's favorite scapegoat. According to everyone in sports the refs are blind as bats, deaf as my mother-in-law, (she's actually quite deaf) and dumb as rocks. On top of this they are as impartial and fair as a politician! If you doubt my words, go sit in the stands and listen to the fans and athletes' parents going to town during any level game in any sport, anywhere in the world! So let's get down and really kick some ref and ump butt! After all, they really deserve it! It's their fault that we lost today! 

ATHLETE'S LOCKER - "They make a ton of mistakes, but they're never wrong" 
PARENT'S CORNER - "Kill the ump!"
COACH'S OFFICE - "What do you do when the refs really are bad?" 
DR. G'S TEACHING TALES - "Blurred vision" 

ATHLETE'S LOCKER

"They make a ton of mistakes, but they are never wrong"

I'm sitting watching a girls 15 and under AAU basketball game recently and numerous times during this particular game, several players from one of the teams bitterly complained to the refs about their calls. For example in one situation, the ref appropriately called a backcourt violation on the same girl twice within a three-minute span. Each time she lost the ball, the girl gave the ref a funny look and then questioned the reasoning for his call. When the ref patiently pointed out where the girl had stepped back over the line, she shook her head as if to say to him, "what are you blind or just simply an idiot? I couldn't possibly have done what you're accusing me of."

Also noteworthy was this team's bench and their responses to what they thought were bad calls. Rather than simply cheering for their teammates and being involved with the game, they would yell their displeasure whenever the refs made a "mistake." Apparently this was whenever the calls went against their team because they whined throughout the entire game. What really troubled me was that their coach didn't once put a stop to this. I suppose that his non- intervention was in keeping with how this team was taught to play. They were overly aggressive and at times verbally abusive to their opponent. In fact, it seemed that their play crossed over the line of fair play into the "dirty" realm. Two examples: One flagrant foul the refs missed against this team occurred when one of their players, throwing the ball in on an out of bounds play, deliberately threw the ball directly into the face of the girl that was guarding her. She tried to make it look like she was attempting to pass to one of her teammates. She then sheepishly smiled and went "oops", claiming that she was actually aiming for the player's feet, not her face. 

A second example occurred on another out of bounds play. X, the player throwing in the ball told her opponent who had been closely guarding her and frustrating her the entire game to "shut the 'f' up" and then she literally slapped her in the face! Just two plays previously this player had stolen the ball from X and obviously X didn't like this. Inexplicably the refs missed this interaction, which took place right in front of a group of parents sitting near the sidelines. 

In this particular game, the ref's calls weren't the problem. The game was ref'ed relatively fairly and rather accurately. The refs were patient with the players and went out of their way to teach as they made the calls. The real problem was this team's attitude and their players' reactions to the officials. These players were rude crybabies who did not know how to play the game! 
When it comes to officiating in your sport, let me make one obvious fact very clear: When you are out on the ice, field or court, you are an athlete and nothing else.sport, but also you are expected to execute to the very best of your ability. 

Plain and simple, your job as an athlete is to perform. As you do this, you are also expected to be a good sport and to not waste time or energy focusing on or complaining about the ref's calls. Contrary to popular belief, or what you may see on TV, your job is NOT to evaluate or criticize the officials. You are an athlete and athletes are not judges, they are performers! 

The fact of the matter is that if you really want to play to your potential you have to stay in this role as performer. In order to accomplish this, you must discipline yourself to continually focus on what's important and block out all the distractions around you. Perhaps one of the biggest distractions for any athlete is the officiating, especially when it goes against you and you feel that's it's questionable. Another sports fact of life: Officials make mistakes. Sometimes they make huge mistakes. Sometimes they make a ton of mistakes. Sometimes they even miss important calls. And sometimes, the officials are down right incompetent. It happens. That's sports! In every walk of life sooner or later you're going to run into one form of incompetence or another. Just as you can have bad coaches, so too can you have bad refs. It's a fact! Deal with it! 

However, as far as you're concerned, the ref's calls are actually irrelevant to your overall job as an athlete! You may not like the calls. You may think the calls are blatantly unfair. They may even make you feel like you've just been robbed! Regardless of all these feelings of yours, you still have to get on with the business of your job, to perform. Mentally you must therefore discipline yourself to completely block out the refs and their calls. In concentration terms, the officials are a huge uncontrollable or "UC." That is, their calls are directly out of your control. There is absolutely nothing that you can do about them. Getting caught up in them will only take you out of your game and lead you to play poorly! As I've said in previous newsletters, concentrating on any uncontrollable will stress you out, undermine your confidence and send your performance down the proverbial tubes. Therefore your job mentally is to not let your concentration stay with any of the calls the refs make. If you find yourself getting upset with a bad call, remind yourself that it's just a "UC" and then let it go and quickly return your focus back to the action of the game, match or race.

PARENT'S CORNER

"Kill the ump!" 

OK, so this is a 6:00 pm Little League game on a warm, late spring evening. It's been a long, hard day of work. However just being outside with everything so green and in bloom makes you feel so much better already. You think to yourself that this is such a nice relaxing way to spend some quality after-work time with your kids and family. You rest easy knowing that the fate of the free world isn't hanging in the balance with the outcome of this contest. After all, this is just a game played by little kids, 9 and 10 year olds. No doubt the kids have it right, for sure! There's little Joey out in right field chasing a Monarch butterfly. Billy's out in left, practicing his glove toss. And there's Michael, your son's best friend, chatting it up with a cute little red head in the stands. None of these kids could care less whether the ball is about to be pitched or not. It's clear that this is all just for fun for them, right? Well we know it's certainly not going to determine the success or failure of these kids later in life, right? 

So help me out here just a little, will you? I'm a bit confused. Can you tell me why that guy over there, who looks to be at least 40, (going on 7) is standing up and raising his voice? Why is he turning so red in the face? I swear I can see the veins bulging out of his forehead. What is he getting so worked up over? Am I missing something important here? Why is he acting like such an obnoxious idiot? 

Now I know he came to the field with a little boy and I'm sure he's that kid's dad. But, he hasn't shut his mouth since the game began and listening to him is giving me a terrific headache, not to mention the fact that I am being overwhelmed with violent fantasies and impulses. He is beginning to ruin my evening.  I just don't get it! He's complaining about the umpire's calls in a little league game! A runner on his son's team was called out trying to steal a base and he's verbally assaulting the ump! Hello? This is not larger than life. This is just a game played by little boys. Are you for real or are you simply pulling all of our legs? You're calling the ump blind? You think that last called strike "stunk" because it was way out of the strike zone, well below your kid's knees? Yo! Aristotle! Is your little boy only a foot tall? Are you suffering from a severe case of hemorrhoids? Are you practicing for the Major Leagues or is there an even better reason that you are making a total fool of yourself and embarrassing your little boy? Have you ever wondered why no one ever sits next to you in the stands? May I suggest that you consider getting yourself a life? 

Listen up parents! When you go to your children's games do them, yourself and everyone around you a big favor. Cheer for the good plays on both sides of the field. Cheer for a good effort. Cheer for fair play and good sportsmanship. However, under NO circumstances whatsoever should you open your mouth and start criticizing the officiating. Even if you think that the refs are deaf, dumb and blind, you should keep your mouth shut and your comments to yourself! Truth be told, what you have to say to the officials is completely irrelevant, even if you think it's brilliant and accurate. 

If you want to go to a professional sports game and verbally assault the officials join the 

thousands of crazed fans and knock yourself out. Have a great time. However, when it comes to youth sports, middle school and even high school games keep your mouth shut! Your criticism of the refs is not constructive and will not change the nature of the game other than to tick the refs off. If you ride an official too hard during a game you may unconsciously set that ref up to make many more "bad" calls against your team. Furthermore, you risk really embarrassing yourself by getting thrown out of the game. More important, before you open your mouth to speak, think about your child! The reason that you are at the field, rink or courts is because of him/her. This is NOT about you. When you verbally trash the officials, the players on the other team or the opposing coaches you are embarrassing your kid, plain and simple. In doing that, you are also distracting him/her from properly focusing on the game. 

Even if you're lucky enough not to embarrass your child by your boorish behavior and attack on the refs, you will end up focusing your child-athlete on the bad calls. Since the officiating in any athletic contest is completely out of the athlete's control, this kind of concentration will set your child up to perform poorly. Athletes who focus on uncontrollables usually end up falling apart under pressure. The best thing that you can do for your child is to encourage him/her NOT to focus on uncontrollables and certainly not to get caught up in the officiating. Want to know the best way to teach your child how to mentally stay away from what the refs are doing? Simple! Model it! 

Enjoy the weather. Enjoy the game. Leave the refs alone. The refs get abused no matter what. No matter what decision they make, someone will always end up being unhappy. A good call for one team is a bad call for the other. Imagine having to deal with this no-win situation in your work environment. Better yet, imagine being at work and constantly having whatever you do criticized loudly and with an excess of emotion. How do you think you'd feel if you were continually blamed for a team's or athlete's loss? Right! You wouldn't like it one bit! Have some sensitivity here for the ref and your child. Have a little empathy. Put yourself in the referee's shoes. In fact, probably one of the most constructive things you can do for yourself is to do some volunteer ref'ing yourself. That would get you some sensitivity to the ref's plight in no time. 

Remember, it's only a game that your children are playing out there, and in the larger scheme of things, it's NEVER really that important! Furthermore, don't forget that the refs are actually human beings, not too different from you. They have feelings, don't particularly like being abused and are out there trying to do the best job possible. In the process they will, like you, inevitably make mistakes. Cut them some slack here. If you do, you'll enjoy the game more and so will your kids!

Does your child struggle with repetitive performance problems? Does she consistently do better in practice than in competitions? Is she suffering from low self-confidence that doesn't fit her athletic abilities? I can help! With my phone coaching service I can help your child get unstuck and back on track. Call me today at (413) 549-1085. Six sessions from slump to peak performance! 

COACH'S OFFICE

"What do you do when the refs really are bad?"

Let's briefly go back to the last basketball season. I was volunteering my time working as a mental toughness coach for both the girls JV and Varsity programs in the local high school. Both teams were about to play at home against a next town rival. Before the first game, the JV coach approached me and told me that I should watch the officiating because I was about to see some of the worst ref'ing I've ever witnessed in my life. I chuckled a bit because I thought he was just joking. He said to me, "I kid you not! The two signed up for this game are unbelievably bad and whenever we play NoHo they rob us blind!" 

I walked away from this conversation still chuckling to myself and wondering whether this was just normal coaching paranoia. When I had a similar conversation with the varsity coach and he basically repeated everything that the JV coach had said, I became puzzled. The varsity coach said that there has been a tradition beyond the rivalry between these two schools. It involved several of the refs who were said to show a clear favoritism for the NoHo teams. Again I thought to myself, "surely these guys are exaggerating. It can't be that bad. After all, how could these refs get away with consistently calling unfair games?"

I then promptly forgot about both of these conversations, as the JV game got under way. It was something about being a father now and watching my daughter play that distracted me from what the coaches had said about the officiating until the first call against our team. It was a phantom traveling call. Every basketball referee must learn both the basic calls of the game as well as the phantom ones. There are phantom charges, phantom over the back calls, phantom double dribbles, phantom stepping out of bounds, etc. I'm embarrassed to admit that despite my vast knowledge of the game I was rather ignorant about these phantom calls, so imagine my surprise when suddenly instead of having two points on a breakaway we'd turned the ball over and the other team had possession. Just a few minutes later it happened again, this time with a different player. She was bringing the ball up court, right in front of me when she was hit with a traveling call. Trust me there was no traveling to be found within fifty miles of this gym! Again, I felt stupid and inadequate that I didn't understand the way these phantom calls worked. However, I want you to know that I'm a quick study so that by the time the fifth phantom turnover was called against us I was ready. I then understood that these two refs were either
unbelievably incompetent or terribly biased. Actually, truth be told, they were both!

Then there were the fouls! Oh my god, the "fouls!" 13 for us in the first half alone to 3 for our opponents! Charging was repeatedly called against our team despite the fact that the defensive player had not yet established position. Our players would get hacked and mugged taking shots and nothing was called. However, if the opponent went up for a shot and there
 was one of our players in her immediate air space, she was whistled for the violation. Speaking about whistles, the home crowd was going crazy with outrage as each of these calls came down. They expressed their anger quite vocally, deriding the refs using colorful words and phrases that I believe you've heard before. 

I have to admit that I was experiencing a few of these rather primitive emotions myself. As a matter of fact, waves of anger kept washing over me. I began entertaining fantasies of the perfect comebacks for each of their terrible calls, "Are you blind enough to really think that was traveling or are you just a complete moron." "Did you know that there is actually a basketball game being played here?" "Gee, I always thought there had to be actual contact before you could call a foul!" I let my emotions and these ridiculous comebacks dance around in my head but made sure that I kept my mouth firmly shut! It's a good thing that there was a policeman at the game because the energy in the gym was getting progressively ugly.

At various points during the game I closely watched the JV coach. I am always interested in how coaches respond to this kind of adversity. Actually having to deal
with consistent bad calls puts you in a really tough "no-win" position as a coach. If you say nothing at all to the refs you give your team the impression that you either don't care or are completely helpless. However, if you get too caught up in the bad calls and lose emotional control, you'll ultimately lose control of your team. Furthermore, if you get too upset with and distracted by the officiating, pretty soon your athletes will be doing the same and focusing on the wrong things. 

So throughout the game, if the calls were outrageous enough, the JV coach would stand up and challenge the refs, voicing his displeasure. However, for the most part he stayed in control and put most of his energy into trying to keep his players focused, composed and running their plays. He knew that if they started to get upset about the calls the game would slip away. Consequently, he continued to remind them that they had absolutely no control over the calls and that he expected them to keep their heads in the game and stay focused. He continually repeated to them. "Let me handle the officials. You guys handle the ball!" At one point, right after his halftime talk he came up to me and muttered under his breath so his players couldn't hear, "What did I tell you? These two are outrageous!" Sadly, I had to now completely agree with him. With all due respect to the referee profession, these two refs were serious candidates for the Incompetence Hall of Fame-. They turned this game into a sophomoric movie, "Dumb and Dumber," with one bad joke after another, where the refs played the leading roles and the girls were relegated to just walk-on parts. Basketball is supposed to be a showcase for the players, not the refs! 

Our team did indeed lose the game, and you guessed it, it was a bad call that set up a final opportunity for the opponents to score. They were able to take advantage of it for a 2-point win. To be fair to the refs, some of their "creative calls" even went against the opponent, although nowhere near as many as were assessed to our team. After the game the girls felt angry and ripped off. There were tears and outrage in the locker room. The coach, however, wouldn't let them go there. He explained to them that as long as the game has been played there have been situations of bad officiating. This was not the first time and it wouldn't be the last time. 

He continued, "Perhaps, had the calls been better tonight we would've won quite easily. But you know, I don't think that's why we lost. We lost because we didn't execute. No matter how bad the refs were, if we had focused on our job and executed the way we're supposed to, we would have come out on top. We didn't do that tonight. We let the calls rattle us and that can't happen.

Look, the refs are a huge uncontrollable. As a player you can't do anything about them. When you hang onto a bad call or get upset with the refs you're hurting yourself and the team. This is the lesson I want you to take away from our game tonight. If you keep your concentration in the game, eventually things will go your way, even with such a big "ref handicap." What I want you to demonstrate the next time you're on a court with these refs is that you're tougher then them. I want you to show them that regardless of how awful they can be, you will not let them rattle you. I want you to be respectful when they make a terrible call and then respond by picking up the level of your play. You see, the one thing that you can always control in these kinds of situations is how you handle all the things that you can't control." 

I watched the girls positively respond to his message. After all, he was right. Nothing constructive can ever come out of angrily focusing on the refs. 

I admired his self-control and composure. I knew that inside he was steaming about the game. I also knew that he was going to go to the league office and file another formal complaint. Several had already been filed through the years but unfortunately nothing had ever come of them. Antagonizing a ref during a game, regardless of how incompetent they may actually be will only put your team further behind the eight ball. Refs are human. When you angrily question their calls, some may experience this as a personal assault on their competence. Not too many people handle these kinds of attacks very well. A lot of refs will respond by calling even more violations against you. That's their passive-aggressive way of getting even with you for questioning them.

Save yourself the aggravation. When you run into poor officiating don't let it knock you off center. Like your athletes, you need to stay focused on the task at hand. You need to stay in the NOW and leave the bad calls behind you. You need to keep your athletes relaxed and properly focused. You won't be able to do this if you're having a meltdown over the officiating. 

DR. G'S TEACHING TALES

"Blurred Vision" - Author Unknown

A businessman was highly critical of his competitors' storefront windows. "They are absolutely disgusting." He claimed to all who'd listen. "They are covered with grime. There are fingerprints all over them. Why, they are the dirtiest windows in the entire town. In fact, someone should tell this shopkeeper just how bad they really are. They are a disgrace to our beautiful downtown." 

His fellow business people grew sick and tired of the man's continual criticism and nitpicking comments about the windows. One day over coffee, the businessman carried the subject much too far. He went on and on, becoming more and more agitated in the process. He made comments about his competitors' cleanliness and even intelligence. "How can someone running a business such as ours know what they are doing if they let their windows get so grimy and dirty. We must do something to correct this. Someone should tell him just how awful his storefront looks." 

Before leaving the coffee shop, however, a fellow storeowner had had enough. He got up enough courage to finally tell the complainer. "Perhaps you should get your own windows washed! Perhaps it is your windows that are the problem here and that's why your neighbor's windows appear so dirty!"  The businessman was shocked into silence. He did not like hearing this kind of feedback and stomped out of the coffee shop in a fit of anger. However, when he returned to his store he took a closer look at his own windows and decided that even though he did not think them to be dirty, he would try to clean them anyway, just to prove his criticizer wrong. So he followed the advice that was given him and the next day at coffee, he exclaimed to all those listening, "I can't believe it. As soon as I washed my windows, my competitor must have cleaned his too because now his are unbelievably shiny!" 

Confucius once declared, "Don't complain about the snow on your neighbor's roof when your own doorstep is unclean." 

Do you have "blurred vision?" Are you really seeing your situation for what it is or just simply what you think it is? The fact of the matter is that your perceptions of the world are NOT the real world; they are simply your perceptions.  As a consequence, they are colored by the "grit and grime" of your biases and past experiences. When you wear green tinted eye- glasses, everything that you look at takes on a greenish hue. When you see the ref making what you consider to be a "mistake" or bad call, is it really? Because you can't always be sure, it's better to give the other person the benefit of the doubt. When it comes to the ref, this means that you should save your energy and dignity, and not waste it focusing on the referee's supposed shortcomings.

IN THIS ISSUE: 

SEX, LIES, AND THE MYTH OF MACHO - Silly me! I thought that in today’s more politically correct world a sport was a sport and reaching a certain level of excellence in your game made you a winner, regardless of what sport you played. Sure, when I was an athlete there were the “true” sports of football, basketball and baseball. If you didn’t play those three then you were somehow considered to be an inferior athlete. You were a lesser man, like myself, and the rest of my fellow wimps, faggots and sissies of the sporting world. After all, that is what they used to call us! However these prehistoric, idiotic and largely homophobic beliefs were a product of the 60’s, a much less civilized time, when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and Neanderthals coached the “big 3.” But alas, alack! This Neanderthal mentality is alive and well on middle school and high school fields and courts across the country. Talented football, basketball and baseball players are walking around feeling smug and superior to the rest of us “pansies” who participate in tennis, swimming, gymnastics, cross country, cycling, golf or you name it! Even in some of these “lesser” sports the better athletes turn on their weaker counterparts and put them down. “Tis better to be the put’er downer than the put’er downee.”  All these “manly” athletes take it upon themselves to point out their superiority by picking on, ridiculing and beating up their less deserving classmates. In this issue we will begin to explore the wonderful world of boys’ sports and its’ bizarre pecking order to see if we can determine just who the “real” pansy is here. 

ATHLETE’S LOCKER - “He’s a real BIG man on campus” 
PARENT’S CORNER - “Raising a strong, sensitive, appropriate male athlete in today’s society”
COACH’S OFFICE - “What are you really teaching those young male athletes of yours?” 
DR. G’S TEACHING TALES - “A good lesson taught” 

ATHLETE’S LOCKER

“He’s a real BIG man on Campus” 

Despite the fact that I was a high school tennis star and one of the top ranked players in both my state and region, I was always burdened with an underlying feeling of inferiority. It didn’t make much sense to me at the time, given the success I had as an athlete. But, somehow, I just didn’t feel as good as some of the other athletes in my school. Of course, had I not been such a space cadet back then I easily would have been able to put two and two together and come up with the answer. I didn’t play a “real” sport! Stupid me!

Tennis, like golf, gymnastics, swimming, diving or any other sport, wasn’t football, basketball or baseball. In short, I was a bit of a wuss because I played a “ladies game.” How did I know this? Simple! The “real” athletes in my school were kind and considerate enough to continually remind me of this fact on almost a daily basis. I was sometimes ridiculed, embarrassed, physically threatened and, at best, ignored because I excelled in a sport they were either too stupid or mean spirited enough to understand.

Forget the fact that I was probably in much better physical condition than most of the baseball team and three quarters of the football team. Let’s not consider the fact that I had unending endurance and could run all day, regardless of the temperature and weather conditions. We can certainly dismiss the mental toughness that had become the cornerstone of my game and enabled me to consistently beat much stronger opponents. These physical and mental traits didn’t make me a “real” athlete. I was still just a stupid tennis player and because of this I didn’t qualify as a  “true jock.” 

At least that’s what “Butch” and his buddies wanted me to believe. (Honest, that really was his nickname). Butch was the man’s man at my high school. He was the cat’s meow and the doggie’s woof! A three-sport athlete and star of the football, basketball and baseball teams, Butch was Mr. Popularity. He was fawned over by all the girls, went out with a cheerleader, was admired (and probably feared) by his teammates and was certainly envied by all. Butch was truly a great athlete and he never let an opportunity go by without helping us to keep this very important fact of life in mind.

Butch was also a bit of a bully. He and his cronies made fun of whoever wasn’t “in.” In his world that meant that he had a ton of targets. If you were in the band you were a “faggot.” If you were in the chess club or on the yearbook staff you were a “weenie.” If you competed on the debate team you didn’t even deserve words, he would just look at you in a weird way and laugh. If you got good grades you were a nerd and a “butt kisser.” If you didn’t play the “big three” you were a “skirt.” Butch wasn’t exactly the most sensitive or politically correct guy around. As a matter of fact, Butch and his modern day counterparts represent what’s wrong with far too many young athletic males today. He was sexist, egotistical, immature, narcissistic (in love with himself), homophobic, intolerant, mean-spirited and flat out selfish. Bottom line: He didn’t give a hoot about anyone else’s feelings except his own.

Deep down, however, I knew what really made Butch tick. In fact, I knew what Butch’s “Achilles’ heel was,” his most feared and heavily guarded secret weakness. You see Butch and all those like him in your school today are nothing more than frightened little boys inside their big athletic bodies. They are afraid of being picked on just like you. They are afraid of being disliked. They fear not fitting in. They are terrified that they will be the one that is ignored. And they take all these fears and feelings, push them way down deep inside, and cover them over with a false sense of bravado and cockiness. They pretend that they are confident. They fake being cool. They act like they are God’s gift to creation and everyone else is a lower life form. Truth be told, the Butchs of the world are just like the Wizard of Oz, that tiny dude hiding behind his curtain, standing on a footstool, using smoke and mirrors to manipulate others! Deep down they are nothing more than shaky little boys who continuously wrestle with intense feelings of inadequacy and self-doubts. 

Not only did Butch protect himself by putting on a show of overconfidence. He also defended himself against his low self-esteem and fears of not fitting in by going on the offensive. This was Butch’s specialty and primary way of coping with his deep-seated feelings of inadequacy. He’d attack and poke fun at other kids and do everything in his power to prevent them from becoming part of his “in” group. In this way old Butch got to make himself feel so much better. That, in fact, is how the Butchs of the world operate. They will attack and isolate you so that they can feel just a little bit better about themselves! 

To insure that he could continue to get away with his oftentimes cruel and immature behavior, Butch made a point of surrounding himself with “yes men”, other frightened little boys who wouldn’t dare stand up for themselves or disagree with their leader for fear of becoming an outcast themselves.  

Therefore they would laugh when Butch picked on or humiliated a classmate and even join in with the attack. Truth be told, Butch, and those like him are terrible cowards. Anyone who has to put someone else down just so that they can feel a little bit better usually is. 

We can better understand Butch’s behavior by looking more closely at the difficult job the adolescent male has of developing in today’s society.
As a teenager your job is very simple but unbelievably difficult: To grow up. Growing up means that you begin to move away from your parents and start to establish a separate identity and life of your own. You have to make your own decisions, think for yourself and take responsibility for your actions. In the process you hope to discover just exactly who you are, what you like and dislike, and what you stand for and believe in. Because going out on your own is so scary, the adolescent looks for comfort in his peer group. A feeling of belonging with “the guys” can make the long, lonely journey into adulthood just a wee bit easier for you. So ironically, even as you go out seeking your independence, you are desperately moving towards the dependence of trying to fit in with your group, all the while plagued by feelings that you somehow don’t fit in.

This is an emotionally painful time for most adolescent male athletes. You’re trying to be “strong” because that’s what expected of you as a young male in today’s society. Unfortunately you rarely feel that way. In fact, most of the time adolescent males feel weak, awkward, isolated, stupid and confused, NOT strong. Believe it or not, these feelings are actually normal! However, as a male in our society you are not supposed to show or tell anyone about these feelings, especially if you are an athlete. Why? According to the macho creed, these feelings of sadness, confusion, helplessness, compassion, empathy, fear, dependence and trust are a sign of weakness and should never be expressed! Pardon me but what a crock!!!!! This macho attitude so prevalent in today’s sports is quite simple: You should show blood before you show tears.        

Old school coaches regularly preached this macho insanity. Unfortunately there are quite a few adult males today who still believe in this sexist, idiotic nonsense, that strength comes from not feeling. How many times has one of your coaches called you “ladies,” “girls” or worse when he was unhappy with your performance or effort in a practice or a game and he wanted to put you down? I find this derogatory use of the female gender rather humorous given that so many of today’s female athletes are physically and mentally superior to a lot of male ones. Many of these young women are more serious athletes who work harder and are better disciplined than their male counterparts. But that’s another story.        

Back to Butch: It’s the desperate need to fit in and the secret fears of the “real athletes” that generate their cruel and abusive behavior to fellow classmates. Isn’t this one of the factors that contributed to the tragedy of Columbine? Want to put a stop to it? Stand up! Speak out! Stop colluding with this cruel, sexist and immature behavior. When you see it happening don’t laugh or smile in agreement. Don’t be a coward yourself! Confront the Big man on campus and tell him to grow up. If you can’t do it yourself get support from friends, teachers or coaches. This doesn’t make you the weak one here. We already know who the weak one is! Hiding your feelings doesn’t make you strong! Picking on less physically developed individuals doesn’t make you superior. On the contrary! It makes you a bully and a coward. 

A message for the Butches in your school: You may be the best athlete on the field or court, or the best athlete in your town, but that doesn’t make you larger than life. That doesn’t even necessarily make you a winner! Furthermore, it doesn’t give you the right to put other kids down. That doesn’t make you better than them. When you act that way it only makes you a loser and a coward! If you are that good and have an ounce of leadership skills in you, then you will take responsibility for making the people around you feel better about themselves and you will go out of your way to help them perform better. 

p.s. Last I heard from Butch he had just successfully completed his third divorce. It seems that he has some talent in messing up relationships. I wonder if he has a few problems with the opposite sex? His employment history hasn’t fared so well either. His latest job is working maintenance for the State University. I wonder if he ever runs into any of those “weenies”, “nerds” and “butt kissers” who work as professors there? At least he’s still a big man on campus. I guess what goes around comes around.

PARENT’S CORNER

“Raising a strong, sensitive, appropriate male athlete in today’s society”

You have a very important but difficult job as a parent raising a boy in today’s society. How do you teach your son to be a strong and assertive male, while at the same time helping him maintain his sensitivity towards others and a connection to his feelings? For fathers who might read this, another, competing question might immediately come to mind. Why would I want my son to be a sensitive and feeling male in this society? Won’t that just leave him weak, vulnerable and indecisive? Good question! 

Perhaps we should begin this discussion by more specifically defining what strength and mental health is in young males. Obviously, what you’re about to read is slightly shaded by my bias. As far as I’m concerned, true strength in a male comes from being in touch with all of your feelings and being able to express them appropriately. The typical male in our society does a pretty good job of being aggressive, competitive and assertive. He is capable of being in touch with his anger and for the most part expressing it in a relatively useful way. However, once beyond these feelings, most males are lost in the dark. They are like the carpenter who has only one tool in his toolbox, a hammer. An interesting thing that happens when all you have in your toolbox is a hammer is that sooner or later everything begins to look like a nail to you.

From an early age we’ve (Dads, mostly) taught are sons to be tough and strong. We’ve told them that this means they shouldn’t cry or show their sadness. We’ve taught them to be independent and that to feel dependent in any situation or ask for help is a sign of weakness. We’ve taught them to avoid empathy because tuning into how others feel will only weaken you and get you into trouble. We’ve taught them to “suck it up” and dissociate from pain because that’s what “real men” do. We’ve brain washed them into believing that expressing feelings of love or affection towards others, especially male figures is taboo and something that only homosexuals do. 

These macho teaching are reinforced quite strongly in the sporting world. For example, you are not likely to find a football coach who’s into what his players are feeling. As a matter of fact, football is the poster child sport for all that’s wrong with adolescent male socialization. If you play on the team then, you have to be tough, play through pain, not whine when you get hurt, act confident and aggressive all the time and, god forbid, NEVER EVER show your feelings. Stand on the sidelines of a youth football practice and sooner or later you’ll hear a frustrated coach calling his players “girls” or “ladies.” 

So what would a strong, well-adjusted adolescent male look like? A Martian, no doubt! First off, he would be somewhat in touch with all of his emotions and have some ability to appropriately express them. He would be sensitive to other’s feelings and be able to put himself into some one else’s shoes. In this regard he would be respectful of the rights of others and show this respect in his behaviors. A healthy young male would NOT be homophobic. Instead, he would have tolerance for the fact that everyone in this world is different. He would be competitive and mentally strong, yet still maintain the ability to keep this competitiveness in perspective. He would be kind and caring and be able to express these feelings. A strong male would feel good enough about himself to be able to speak up when he felt that someone else’s rights were being violated. He would be a champion for those being abused or mistreated. Most important, an appropriate strong male would have respect for women and treat them as the equals that they are. Finally, a well-adjusted male adolescent would have a healthy sense of self-esteem and therefore not need to abuse or oppress others simply to feel better about himself. 

Does this sound like a pie in the sky image? Perhaps. Impossible to achieve? I don’t think so. But, then I’m a terminal optimist. I think that you can educate young boys to grow into powerful, yet caring adult males. However, you’ve got your work cut out for you, especially in today’s macho, sexist society. Start your education with your son from day one. While both mom and dad play important roles here, dad’s is absolutely critical.

As a father you want to model appropriate behavior. Be the kind of man in your life that you want your son to eventually grow into. Want him to be tolerant of others? Then you had better be! Want him to respect women and be kind to others? Walk the talk! Treat him with sensitivity and respect. How you carry yourself in the world and in your relationships with him and others will significantly determine the kinds of lessons he learns and the kinds of relationships he develops as an adult. Remember, you will always teach far more powerfully by what you do rather than by what you say!

Above all else, teach your son to feel good about himself. Build his self-esteem in genuine, honest ways. Get in the habit of catching him doing things right. Get excited over his accomplishments. Celebrate his successes and teach him how to learn from his failures. Low self-esteem is probably at the root of most of the nasty, abusive behavior that you regularly see going on with adolescents. Kids who pick on others in school or on teams do so because they feel badly about themselves. One way to stop the cruelty all too common among adolescents is to help your son feel good about himself. Not only will this insure that he doesn’t participate in or collude with this cruelty, but high self-esteem will give your son the courage to speak up when he sees it happening to others.           

COACH’S OFFICE

“What are you really teaching those young male athletes of yours?”

(Inspirational half-time talk from a politically correct, slightly frustrated and very burnt out, but nevertheless “sensitive” male soccer coach to his u-14 boys’ team during their first round game of the State Tournament.  Halftime score: 2 - 0) 

“Listen up ladies! I have never seen such an f***en sorry display of soccer in all my years of coaching. (Voice increasing in volume) You guys are playing like a bunch of f***en girls. You are absolutely pitiful. You should be ashamed of yourselves! You’re not challenging the ball. I don’t think you won one 50-50 ball the entire first half and your passing is pure crap! Don’t you have any skills? Are you all really this bad? What is wrong with you today? (A near scream now with spittle flying out of his mouth for effect) My old lady can play better than this! This team has no business beating you, never mind being ahead by two goals!!! They suck and they’re still kicking your pansy little butts! You call yourself a men’s team? Hah! You guys are nothing more than a bad joke! You’re a total disgrace to this league and to my program. I’m f***en embarrassed to be your coach! The local middle school girls’ team could probably outplay you the way you’re playing today. Blah…blah…blah.”      

So if I’m listening to this as an impressionable adolescent male who wants nothing more than to be liked and respected by his male coach, I’m thinking a) I really suck. I’m playing like a girl. b) I have absolutely no talent and probably don’t deserve to be on this team. c) I should be ashamed of myself because coach says so. d) Coach is a total butt head. e) All of the above. 

If you chose “d” or “e” you’re probably correct. Of course, the best response that we could hope for in a young man listening to this idiotic tirade is “d”, that the coach is a total butt head. Hey coach! What are you teaching your guys with this kind of macho, verbal temper tantrum? Are you teaching them how to be strong? Are you teaching them how to feel good about themselves and play harder? Are you providing some helpful feedback about the mistakes that they are making and what they need to do to correct them? What is the point of your creative (f****en) language coach? Does it motivate and inspire your young charges to reach for greater heights? How about that reference to “playing like girls” coach? Surely that has some well thought out, positive, psychologically sophisticated purpose. After all, you do claim that you’ve been coaching this age group for over 20 years and you know what you’re doing. I’m sure that this is what the higher ups in the Catholic Church have been saying all along about the tragic child abuse that they have been passively colluding with for the past 30 plus years, that they know what they are doing. Perhaps you have a constructive purpose in mind when you repeatedly call these young boys, “girls.” Maybe you think that this will help the boys better develop a clear sexual identity as well as a healthy respect for the opposite sex.

Ok! I’ll stop with the sarcasm! It’s just that I get really annoyed when I hear stories of coaching abuse like this. REALLY ANNOYED!!!! The fact of the matter is that as a coach you need to continuously be aware of the unbelievable power that you wield with these young and vulnerable boys. If you’re working with preadolescents or teenagers, then you are in a position, on almost a daily basis over the course of the season to either build them up or break them down. You can actively help them develop self-confidence and a healthy sense of self or you can leave them crippled by low self-esteem and a poor self-image the way this coach is doing. In sum, you have the power to help these young men develop into winners or losers. All too often coaches take for granted their tremendous influence and therefore stop paying attention to what they say and do with their athletes. Worse yet, sometimes coaches like this one are well aware of what they are saying to their kids and they think this is called “coaching.” Actually, this is known as child abuse! 

You have to ask yourself on a daily basis, “what do I want my athletes to learn from this practice/this interaction/this game/this loss/this mistake.” If you maintain awareness of this question and you let it shape everything that you say and do with your athletes, then you won’t get caught making stupid mistakes like this coach or Coach X. Coach X is a negative kind of individual who has been coaching far too long. He is abusive and insensitive to the needs and concerns of the adolescent boys that he works with. Because of his insensitivity, all the actual knowledge that he has of the game is totally useless. He yells at his players when they make mistakes. He yells when they don’t do what he wants. He doesn’t swear, he just yells, all the time! In the process, he makes a point of embarrassing his players in front of their teammates. He won’t correct their mistakes and tell them what they are doing wrong. Instead he simply prefers to get angry with them. What he doesn’t realize is that he is systematically demoralizing his players. He is destroying their self-confidence and getting them totally distracted with not messing up. They are more focused on not making mistakes and the coach getting angry then they are on playing the game. As a consequence Coach X’s teams play tight and far below their potential. This only makes him more frustrated and angry. He thinks his players are the real problem. He doesn’t get it! 

Coach X took one of my athletes, a self-confident, talented and highly coachable 15-year old who had made his regional Olympic Development Program squad three years running, and, in just 6 short months, killed his confidence and turned him into a self-conscious mess on the field. He did this by constantly criticizing this adolescent, refusing to give him specific, constructive feedback and yelling at him whenever he made mistakes. When the boy came up and asked the coach what he could do to improve, the coach’s response was, “Haven’t you been paying attention in practice?” Three months before the boy, with his parents’ help, decided to quit this team and end the abuse, Coach X pulled the boy aside after a game and said to him in a nasty tone, “How did you ever make the ODP team?” Keep in mind that this is a kid with a winning attitude, a kid who is highly motivated and would run through walls for the coach, a kid who’s a class act.  

Being hard on the boys you coach will NOT necessarily make them tougher. Constantly criticizing them will NOT make them better. This hard ass approach to coaching is Neanderthal-like and belongs with the dinosaurs, extinct! This is NOT the way to effectively coach young men in today’s society, regardless of how many other coaches are out there doing this.  

So how do you as a coach help educate young men to become better athletes and better people? The main thing that you can do is to be a wonderful male role model. Be supportive. Be strong. Create a safe environment for your athletes to learn and excel. Be trustworthy and honest in all your dealings with these boys. Follow through with what you say you’re going to do. Be tolerant of individual differences, i.e. race, color, religion, sexual orientation. YES, even sexual orientation! Don’t be like the typical Neanderthal coach, a homophobic role model. Don’t use gay and queer as derogatory statements aimed at those of your athletes who mess up. Be respectful of women in your interactions with your athletes. Don’t refer to your athletes as “ladies,” “girls” or worse when you are displeased or frustrated with them. This is sexist, disrespectful to women and offensive! It’s not something that you should be teaching to anyone. 

In addition to being a good role model, do not collude with abusive, sexist or mean spirited behaviors coming from your athletes or assistant coaches. Do not allow your athletes to scapegoat or be disrespectful to a fellow teammate. NEVER ignore this kind of behavior coming from your athletes. It is a cancer on your team and if left unchecked will work at cross-purposes to your goals. Call attention to it immediately and stomp it out clearly and quickly.       

You have a huge and important responsibility as a coach of young men. Be an appropriate role model. Expect them to be at their best. Teach them to be tough and strong. Help them to use this strength to be sensitive and caring of others. This is not an easy job for you to do as a male coach in our society. However, I have great faith in you. I know that you can do it!

DR. G’S TEACHING TALES

“Teaching the right lesson”

It was a middle round game in the 14-year old boys AAU State Basketball tournament and Coach M’s team was playing well. They were effectively running their motion offense and converting the open looks they got. Their defense was just as tough and produced turnover after turnover. By the end of the first half the game was essentially over. Coach M’s team had a formidable 20-point lead.

Going into the second half the floodgates started to open. Three consecutive turnovers led to three quick scores. Soon there was a 30-point lead. M’s team continued to press and play good ball and it just seemed like the opposing team was beginning to fall apart. Like a prize- fighter who’s had his midsection pounded for most of the fight, the opponent seemed to be losing steam and about to go down for the count. 

In the fourth quarter, with almost a 40-point lead, the attitude of some of M’s players began to gradually shift. No longer playing as hard, they began to relax and joke around a bit. On one breakaway, their point guard dribbled to the hoop and did a hot dog move behind his back before he laid the ball in. It was totally unnecessary because no one was on him and it had the air of “in your face” to the other team. The bench went nuts laughing and smacking each other with high fives. The crowd erupted. The parents clapped. Coach M’s reaction was confusion and disbelief. 

Now the opponent seemed to be getting more and more demoralized. They tried to play their game but with each turnover it was like the wind was knocked further out of their sails. Then it happened again: Another unnecessary showy move from a different player making his opponent look rather foolish. Coach M’s entire bench erupted in laughter and merriment after they scored. As he looked on in continuing disbelief, Coach M listened to his players on the court talking condescending trash to the opponents. No longer were they playing good basketball for the sake of winning. Now they had crossed a line. They were embarrassing the opponent and appeared to be doing it deliberately.

Coach M had gotten more and more quiet on the bench as the fourth quarter wound down and two more of these incidents occurred. Truth be told, he was seething mad inside and was doing everything in his power to try to control himself. He had thought about calling a time out but was too worried about being overwhelmed by his anger. Instead, he decided to wait to see whether he could calm himself down. He hated what he was seeing from his guys and stopped focusing on the game and his team’s execution. All that seemed suddenly quite irrelevant.  He looked into the stands and saw the parents smiling and slightly bemused by what they were seeing. This didn’t sit too well with him either.

The clocked ticked down the last few seconds. The buzzer sounded signaling the game’s end. Final score: M’s team 75, opponent 28. Both teams lined up to shake hands. Coach M went through the line last and as he shook each opposing player’s hand, he quietly apologized for the behavior of his team. Meanwhile, his boys continued to happily enjoy the post-game celebration. They joked about how they had totally dominated the game and picked their weaker opponent apart. Parents came down from the stands smiling, feeling good that their boys had played well and moved on to the next round. They offered their congratulations. 

And that’s when Coach M snapped. Maybe he should have waited until he had the team alone. Maybe he should have been a little more discreet. Perhaps he should have waited until he had gotten more in control of his emotions. The fact of the matter is that Coach M is human. In fact, he’s a very good, caring coach and that’s why he lost it after the game. 

He abruptly told his players in a harsh voice, “Sit down and shut up! Every one of you, RIGHT NOW!!!” The celebratory smiles and laughter disappeared in a flash. There was dead silence from the team as looks of fear and total confusion crossed the boys’ faces. 

They had never seen M this angry before, nor had they ever heard him talk to them in that way. They didn’t have a clue what was wrong. The parents stopped dead in their tracks, smiles frozen on their faces. Everyone in the gym within hearing distance suddenly stopped moving and fell silent.

M continued: “I have NEVER been so embarrassed in all the years I’ve been coaching! 22 years and not once have I felt as badly about what I saw out on the court as I did today. The display you guys just put on was the worst case of sportsmanship I have ever seen in my life. You embarrassed those boys out there, you embarrassed me and you made complete jackasses of yourselves! What you did was totally uncalled for! How dare you treat your opponent that way? How dare you be so disrespectful? Do you think that you’re so good that you can afford to deliberately make another team look like idiots? Unbelievable! You may have won the game score-wise, but in my book you guys acted like total losers.” Heads began to drop and tears began to fall.  

Parents who were listening felt extremely uncomfortable. Some later expressed outrage at M for raining on their kids’ parade. Others understood where he was coming from but felt that he had gone about it too harshly, that he had gone too far. Still others felt that his timing was off and he should have waited to get the boys alone. My feeling: It was an important lesson that needed to be taught.  
        
M continued with the players. “If you would like to continue to play for me you will NEVER, ever treat another opponent so badly, EVER! I expect you to play hard and play with dignity and respect for the other team. I don’t even care how your opponent acts. I don’t even care if he’s disrespectful to you! You will, NOT be disrespectful to him. Ever again! Under no circumstances! That’s NOT how we play this game! I am only interested in you guys conducting yourselves like champions and that’s NOT what I saw today. NEVER AGAIN BOYS!!!! If you want to play for me, this can never happen again. Now go home and think about what I’ve said and what you did.”    

With that Coach M picked up his clipboard, the ball bag and walked out of the gym leaving everyone behind him completely speechless. 

I don’t know what lesson you’ll take away from this story. But I know one thing: Coach M’s team NEVER, EVER acted like pompous, stuck-up brats again. They learned a painful lesson that night and one that they never forgot.   

…………………..         
As a full time sports psychologist Dr. Goldberg specializes in helping athletes in every sport, at every level overcome performance blocks and perform to their potential. Through his short term, weekly phone coaching service he has helped thousands of struggling athletes bust out of slumps, overcome fears and reach their athletic goals. Phone coaching is for the athlete that seems to get too nervous to play her own game, who does better in practice than competition, who always seems to fall apart in the bigger competitions or who is struggling with a repetitive performance problem. 

Dr. Goldberg has written and produced numerous mental toughness training tapes, CD's and books. His most famous, Sports Slump Busting outlines the steps that struggling athletes and teams need to take to bust out of their performance woes and develop the mind of a champion. Playing Out of Your Mind, written for soccer players is an easy-to-read, practical mental toughness training guide for coaches and athletes. In addition, Dr. G has books for baseball, softball, gymnastics, swimming as well as an all-sport mental toughness workbook. His latest mental toughness training CD's, 14 Steps To Mental Toughness is the most comprehensive and easy to use training program on the market today for athletes in all sports. Dr. G also has sports specific audio training programs for softball, baseball, swimming, tennis, diving, soccer, gymnastics and darts, as well as a parent/coaches training tape.

Finally Dr. G is available to personally train your athletes at your club or organization. He provides workshops at your site with separate talks for your parents, coaches and athletes. He is a sought after keynote speaker at coaches conferences around the country because of his ability to take the subject of mental toughness training and present it in a down-to-earth, practical and humorous way. 

IN THIS ISSUE:

Good Coach – Bad Coach: There is absolutely no question that an athlete's experience within her sport is almost completely colored by the type of coach she is lucky or unlucky enough to draw. A good coach will teach the athlete to love the sport. He will inspire that athlete to dream big and take risks in pursuit of that goal. He will motivate the athlete to work hard, push through pain and fatigue and bounce back from setbacks and failures. He will build trust among team members and teach each athlete to sacrifice the "I" for the "we." A good coach will teach valuable life lessons and model these through his behaviors and interactions with the athlete and everyone he comes in contact with. A good coach will directly and indirectly change that athlete into a better, more confident, happier person.  A bad coach, on the other hand will teach very different lessons. Through his treatment of his players and interactions with those around him he will turn his athletes off to the sport. He will gradually kill the athlete's love and enjoyment of the game. He will steal the athlete's self-confidence and energy and replace them with self-doubts and apathy. A bad coach will motivate the athlete to expend her energies in self-protection and risk 
avoidance, rather than personal excellence. He will breed jealousy, selfishness and mistrust on the team. He will snuff out dreams and make the athlete fear failure on and off the playing field. A bad coach will leave the athlete diminished and embittered. In this issue of The Mental Toughness Newsletter, we will revisit this topic of good coach – bad coach.                     

PARENT'S CORNER - "The truly excellent coach, a rare blessing in today's sports"
COACH'S OFFICE – "The dilemma of being a good coach" 
DR. G'S TEACHING TALES "It's about winning, stupid!"  


PARENT'S CORNER

“The truly excellent coach, a rare blessing in today’s sports world”

Both my girls have been on tons of teams over the years in almost every sport imaginable. They’ve competed at almost every level there is from recreational and travel team, to middle school and high school varsity. It is only now, after almost fifteen years of various coaching with both girls that my youngest daughter now has what I would consider to be a truly remarkable coach. More on him later.

This is not to say that there haven’t been some decent coaches over the years. When my girls were both playing at a recreational level they both had very kind coaches who knew just enough about the game and about kids to give my girls a fun, rewarding experience. However, as I look back on all their team experiences I am dismayed to see that the decent coaches were the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of coaches they had were either kind, but completely ineffectual or downright nasty and abusive.  

The unbelievably frustrating part for a parent is to watch your child go through a youth sports experience with this kind of coach. To help you develop a better perspective about what a good coach really looks and sounds like, I’d like to share with you my 15 year-old daughter’s current experience on her AAU basketball team. She has tried over the past three years to make the AAU team and each time has been cut. This Spring she finally made the team and for the first time ever she is playing for a coach who not only really knows the game of basketball, but who knows how to teach the game to adolescent girls.

My daughter is, plain and simple, ecstatic. Having had so many bad coaches over the years she instantly is aware that this coach, Coach J is a very different animal. She is learning the game. She is feeling better and better about herself as an athlete. She is feeling listened to, recognized and valued by the coach and his two assistants. She is quite simply blossoming in the rare air of this refreshingly healthy environment.

Coach J is a stickler for detail and demands that these girls learn the game his way and play to the best of their ability. However, having said that, his coaching methods are very basic, down-to-earth and effective. He underscores that the new girls will be completely overwhelmed by all the new material. They are! However, like a good teacher he makes it quite clear to them that their frustration and confusion are normal and to be expected. He also lets them know that at the other end of their frustration and not knowing is understanding and competence. He reassures them that they will soon master these new offenses and defenses, just like everyone else.

Coach J is a great teacher. He stops the practice whenever there is a teaching moment and he effectively uses it. He points out what went wrong, what should have happened and then demonstrates the right way again and again. When he corrects his players he uses his knowledge of their personalities to make his interventions. With some he uses humor. 

With others he yells in mock horror. With still others he puts his arm around them and challenges them to point out what they did wrong. Above all else, with everyone he is good natured and patient. It’s as if he has the inner knowledge that in his interactions with these young ladies there is far more than the learning of sound basketball fundamentals at stake. Plain and simple, Coach J knows the impact that he has on these girls. This is good coaching!

His sense of humor is probably the major vehicle that he uses to teach the game. He uses it in a kind way, sometimes even poking fun at himself whenever he messes up. The girls respond to this style and there are a lot of smiles and laughter during practice even when they are working their butts off! Humor certainly can be used as a weapon to cut, demean or embarrass. This is not how Coach J uses it. His humor seems wrapped in kindness and patience.
Like all good coaches, Coach J is enthusiastic. He clearly loves the game and enjoys teaching it. When you play for a coach like this your experience is dramatically different than when you play for someone who is just going through the motions. His enthusiasm regularly and predictably bubbles over whenever his players execute successfully. He always seems to go out of his way to catch the girls doing things right. He’ll stop the practice, point out what was just done effectively and single out the girl who just did it. I don’t know if he’s conscious of how much he’s building self-esteem and confidence in each of these interactions. It probably doesn’t really matter. I’ve watched enough practices at this point to see that this is an integral part of his coaching style.       

Coach J has been coaching AAU teams for over twenty years now. Perhaps the fact that he has also raised three daughters of his own has contributed to his sensitivity to the needs and issues of the adolescent girl.  Far too many male coaches don’t have a clue about how to work with young women. As a consequence they neglect the importance of the coach-athlete relationship by yelling at and demeaning their athletes. Young women are motivated by relationships and when you ignore this fact you not only limit your coaching effectiveness but you also do a lot of psychological damage. 

The games haven’t started yet this season but I heard from another parent that Coach J plays everyone on the team in each game. To be honest, I was quite surprised by this because the level of play in the AAU system is so high. Not surprising however was Coach J’s explanation for doing this. He sees his job and this team as a vehicle to teach these girls the game. Learning is his main priority for them, NOT winning. Accordingly the girls can’t possible learn the game if they are always sitting on the bench while just the best players play. When I heard that’s when I knew he was a Martian. Here’s a man who does not have his ego and self-worth tied up in his team’s record. Sounds like he already knows that he’s a good coach and doesn’t feel the need to prove it by winning.           
        
Have hope as a parent. There are a few good coaches out there. When your child runs into one, truly appreciate the moment and be sure to take the time to let this coach directly know how you feel about him/her.

COACH'S OFFICE

“The dilemma of being a good coach” 

With all this March Madness coming to a crescendo with the finals of the men and women’s NCAA basketball championships upon us, there’s another form of madness that coaches around the country have to suffer through.  I’d like to take the time to empathize with the madness of the no-win situations that far too many coaches are placed in today. 

Sixty-five teams began the men’s NCAA tournament (I think just 64 for the women) and that means that there are going to be 64 losers! Think about that! 64 teams will end their season with a loss. 64 coaches will go out “failing” in the eyes of some of the media, the fans, a few of their misguided colleagues and parts of their athletic administrations. As a result of their losses, a number of these coaches will actually lose their jobs. Their athletic administrations will replace them with someone who they believe and hope will be more of a “winner” next year. Lost in the process of these replacements are the feelings and wishes of the athletes that initially signed on to play with these “losing” coaches.  A more remarkable loss, as far as I’m concerned, is the actual job that some of these coaches were doing with their athletes. 

The fact of the matter remains that regardless of what the media and all the experts say, what your won-loss record was and how far you went in the post season tournament does NOT really determine whether you are a successful coach or not. Now I’m not naïve. I know that what I’ve just said is considered quite stupid by all the basketball and coaching aficionados around the country. After all, when you come right down to it, it’s really only about winning. If it wasn’t, do you think a coach like Bobby Knight could land another job so quickly?  The bottom line remains the same: When you win you’re successful and considered to be a good coach and when you lose or somehow don’t win it all, you are not quite as “good.”

Why else do ESPN and every other major sports network compile all these “useful” statistics of the losing, winningest coaches who have never come away from the big dance with a title? You know darn well what the implication here is! If you don’t win the big one then you really haven’t made it. There’s Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim and Temple’s John Chaney near the top of the list, both having won a ton of NCAA tournament games but never the defining one. Only a few years ago Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun was a long term member of that unhappy list until he finally shook the monkey off his back with an improbable win against Duke in the 1998-1999 tournament. Let’s face it. With all those in the “know”, the real measure of your true worth as a coach is in how many of the big titles you win.

That is the “no win” predicament that far too many coaches find themselves in today. Regardless of the level that you coach at, if you don’t have a winning record, the parents, fans and others associated with your sport naturally assume that you don’t know what you are doing. What really makes you a good coach is almost totally and completely ignored in judging you, if you don’t win. Interesting enough, when abusive, insensitive and demeaning coaches win, they are considered to be brilliant tacticians and great coaches. It seems to me that there is something fundamentally wrong here.            

The pressure to “prove yourself” by winning enough corrupts a lot of coaches. They end up sacrificing some of their integrity and decency to the fickle gods of winning. In the process, they lose their perspective of what’s really important at the expense of their players. Please don’t misunderstand me here. I’m not a purist nor a goody-two-shoes. I am as competitive as the next guy, perhaps even more. I love winning and I hate losing with a passion. However, the outcome of your games and your won-loss record for the season have very little to do with your caliber as a coach. Having said that I will also say that really good coaches in my definition of “really good,” end up winning a lot anyway. 

So if you dare to be different and not sell your soul to the gods of winning, then where shall you go for direction? What guiding principles shall you follow? 

Well, like a good psychologist, let me answer that question with a question or two: What is your purpose as a coach? What important lessons are you interested in teaching your athletes? What do you want them to learn from their time with you? Far too many coaches don’t realize that every day, in almost everything that they say and do, and for better or worse, they are teaching life lessons to their athletes that go far beyond the insignificant x’s and o’s of the sport. Under the best of circumstances the lessons taught are about the value of integrity, hard work, honesty, fairness, and sportsmanship, how to master both success and failure, the importance of teamwork and sacrificing personal needs for the greater good, how to handle adversity, the need for compassion and caring, what a positive role model is and much more. With good coaching, the athlete comes away the experience a much better person with a renewed commitment to personal excellence, a positive attitude and increased self-confidence. This is because really good coaches know that the experience is really about the athletes, not the coach. Really good coaches are NOT selfish in that way. 

Under the worst of coaching circumstances, the lessons communicated are far more limiting and destructive. The athlete learns about dishonesty, favoritism, emotional abuse, jealousy, head games, poor to no communication, doing just enough to get by, the abuse of power, and that winning is the only thing that really matters. Under this kind of bad coaching the athlete gets to absorb the interpersonal failings of a terrible role model. He learns all about selfishness and insensitivity. His love and enthusiasm of the sport is dampened. His self-confidence is shattered. The athlete comes away from this experience personally diminished, turned off to the sport, resentful and embittered.             
       
So what’s it going to be for you? Are your ego and feelings of self-worth strong enough for you to keep winning in perspective and successfully survive the pressures of coaching in today’s frequently crazy and always intense sports world? I sure hope so because we really need you! The fact of the matter is that really good coaches are getting harder and harder to find.

DR. G'S TEACHING TALES

“It’s about winning,  stupid!”

It was the finals of the State High School Soccer Championships and it was being played before a crowd of almost 7,000 crazed and screaming fans under the lights at the State College’s brand new, soccer facility. The hype and media attention leading up to the game had produced a standing room only crowd. Both teams, bitter archrivals were not only undefeated in their regions, but also equally matched. Interesting enough, the two opposing head coaches were intense competitors themselves, but good friends. The game promised to be a hard fought, exciting showdown and it didn’t disappoint.     

From the opening whistle, the game was attack, counter attack, the coaches directing their teams as if on a chessboard. The West struck first around the 10-minute mark of the first half. The West’s striker beat his man, then two more defenders before launching a rocket past an outstretched goalie into the upper left corner of the net. The fans erupted. The West maintained this lead almost the remainder of the first half with their keeper making two dramatic saves on what looked like to be sure goals. Then with less than two minutes remaining in the half, the East attacked, crossed the ball into the middle where one of their taller forwards headed the ball away from the keeper for a score. Both teams went into the locker room with the game knotted up at 1 goal apiece.

If possible, the second half was even more intense than the first. The East took the lead 14 minutes in when they counterattacked catching the West defenders off guard and out of position. They maintained their two goals to one lead until there was less than five minutes left in regulation. Once again the West’s striker took over, dribbled through two defenders and crossed the ball to a streaking teammate for a wide-open shot to tie the game at two. The roar of the crowd was deafening. Both coaches yelled out frantic instructions from the sidelines. 

In the last four minutes of regulation, the intensity level was cranked up several notches. As time ticked away the tension mounted even more. With less than two minutes to go the West mounted another offensive attack. The ball was hotly contested into the left hand corner and went out of bounds off an East defender. A corner kick was awarded to the West. As the West player got ready to kick the ball his coach yelled out instructions. The rest of the West team jockeyed for position in front of the goal, setting up a particular play. As the kicker set up the ball there was less than 20 seconds on the clock. Given that there had been no stoppage of play in the second half that was all that was left in the game. 

The 7000 plus fans watching fell silent as the kicker approached the ball. His kick was perfect. The ball sailed in a high arcing curve, from left to right across the front of the East’s goal. As both teams struggled for position one of the West’s players jumped up and faked a header. His job was to try to draw the defenders away from his teammate whose job it was to take the header. As he did so he put both of his hands up and the ball sailed right through them, just barely grazing a finger on his left hand, but not enough to affect the direction of the ball. As the play was designed, his teammate then leaped up and headed the ball into the right hand corner of the net for the winning score. The crowd went crazy and then the horn ended signaling time had run out! The West players began a wild celebration in the middle of the field. The East players and coaches desperately complained to the officials that the goal should be disallowed because there was a handball. Interesting enough, none of the officials had been positioned to clearly see the West player grazing the ball with his fingertip. The score held. The game was over! The West had won the State Championship! Or had it?

It just so happened that the West’s bench had a very clear view of what had actually happened those last frantic seconds in front of the East’s goal. The West’s coach, assistant coach and several bench players saw the handball very clearly. While his players were celebrating, the head coach walked up to the East’s coach and explained to him that he had seen the handball. Both then approached the officials. A prolonged discussion ensued. The West’s coach insisted that he did not want to win the State Championship that way. Then the whistles blew, the celebration stopped, the crowd was silenced. Over the loudspeaker it was announced that a handball had indeed occurred and that the game would now go into a 15 minute, sudden death overtime period. There was a loud groan from the West’s supporters and a huge cheer from the East’s fans. 

It’s about winning, stupid! What is wrong with you? Don’t you realize you just gave away the State Championship? Listen Bud! You need your head examined! What are you, some kind of freak or what? Just what we need in sports today> Another Abe Lincoln!

Let’s just think about what just happened here for a moment. This coach did not have to do anything about the handball. It was not called. The game was officially over. His team was the official State Champions. They were the winners. However, this coach had too much integrity to allow himself to win this way. In his mind, this wasn’t an honest win! On top of that, he would be beating a good friend in what he perceived was a very dishonest way. This was simply a missed call that determined the outcome of a very important game. How many coaches in his position would have done the same thing? Very few! You have to have a lot of class and integrity to pull something like this off. You have to be unwilling to sacrifice your personal values for the temporary glitter of winning. Regardless of the eventual outcome of this game, the West’s coach was a winner. He was a class act.  He had his priorities straight. Perhaps he was a bit of a Martian if you will, but a class act nonetheless. 

Before the overtime period he explained to his team why they were playing an overtime period. He let them know that if they were going to be State Champions they were going to have to earn it honestly and fairly. He also told them that he was proud of their efforts up to that point and that he trusted them to continue to carry themselves like State Champions regardless of the game’s outcome. 

p.s. The West scored the game-deciding goal 8 minutes into the sudden death overtime period to win the State Championship for the second time in the same game.

IN THIS ISSUE:

PETTINESS, JEALOUSY, IMMATURITY AND MAINTAINING A LOSER'S ATTITUDE - THE BEHAVIOR OF "THE LITTLE PEOPLE."

There's a terrible cancer out there that's spreading through your sport. It may be festering in one or more of your teammates. It may be sitting in the stands growing large and ugly behind the false smiles of several of the team's parents. I sure hope it's not growing in you! Your coach may be desperately trying to ignore it, hoping beyond hope that it will just go away. This cancer is a deadly killer. It kills the happiness that is supposed to be an integral part of sports participation. It kills an athlete's self-esteem and self-confidence. It positively destroys the integrity of a team and makes playing together impossible. When it's finished wreaking its' havoc, this killer will turn your season into a shambles, taking talented, well trained athletes and turning them into losers. The cancer that I speak of is cultivated and spread by the "little people" on your team. The little people are those immature, selfish, petty and sometimes wickedly stupid athletes and adults who let their emotions and self-esteem rule their intellect and guide their judgment. "Little people" gang up and mercilessly pick on other teammates. They are cowardly and do it behind the coach's back. The targets for their scapegoating behaviors are almost always far more talented athletes than them. Why? Simple! Little people are threatened by the success of others. Sadly, it makes them feel more inadequate than they already are. Whether parent or athlete, these little people exhibit a loser's attitude and they must be stopped! In this issue of the Mental Toughness Newsletter we will address the cancer of pettiness, jealousy and immaturity in sports.

ATHLETE'S LOCKER - "Will you please just grow up!?"
PARENT'S CORNER - "The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree"
COACH'S OFFICE - "Don't be a wishy-washy. Take a clear, firm stand. Protect your kids and your program."
DR. G'S TEACHING TALES - "What big people really look like - The stock boy"

ATHLETE'S LOCKER

"Will you please just grow up!?"

Sandy is a very talented athlete. As a 14 year old, she is a national caliber swimmer with Olympic potential. She has been ranked in the top 3 in the nation in her best event, the 100 Freestyle ever since she was 10. Amazingly she is unimpressed with her own success and doesn't flaunt it. In fact, you would never know that she was as good as she was by talking to her. She is a good sport and is self-effacing. Sandy and her family recently moved to a small town in a new state when her father was transferred because of his job. As expected, Sandy joined the local swim team to continue her training.

Ideally, one might expect that the new town and team would warmly embrace Sandy. After all, having someone that good on your team can only make the whole team better. Sandy's talent can potentially provide a source of motivation for every athlete in that pool as well as a model of excellence for the younger swimmers. If an athlete is smart, he'll see that someone who is much better than him will provide him and his teammates with the opportunity to lift the overall level of his training. This is one of the very best ways to get better as an athlete. You have to be challenged by stronger, more talented individuals.

The fact of the matter is that your success as an athlete is always built upon your failures and losses. Getting beaten by other athletes, like milk, is good for you. While it never feels good to lose, these failures help make you stronger. Your continual losses to that pesky archrival are supposed to motivate you to train harder, not turn you into a whining, jealous, crybaby. If you are always number one, and you never experience failure, then you will never reach your true potential as a champion. Suffering and losing are an important part of the success package.

What Sandy and her family couldn't anticipate was that she was moving into a town inhabited by "little people." Actually there are "little people" in every town and on every team wherever sports are played! Sandy was not at all welcomed on this team by the five girls that were her age. Quite the contrary! As soon as they realized how very fast she was and how hard she worked, they began a campaign of hate, jealousy and immaturity. They began to mercilessly pick on her. They openly ignored her. They huddled in a group before practice and whispered to each other, occasionally glancing over towards Sandy to let her know that they were talking about her. They said stupid and mean things to her!

When I got off the phone with Sandy after she told me this story I was hopping mad! As I write these words I am still fuming! All I have to say to athletes like this…no, I am not even going to qualify you as an athlete…to little children like this is PLEASE GROW UP! Stop embarrassing yourself! These girls think that they are somehow superior to Sandy because they have been able to exclude her from their stupid, immature clique. All they have accomplished as far as I'm concerned is to completely make fools of themselves. Their behavior is downright embarrassing! You're 14 years old and you're acting like a little baby. PLEASE! GROW UP!

Several of them actually approached Sandy and said to her, "If you hadn't moved here we would be better than we are now and would be ranked higher."

Can you believe that?!!! This statement not only reeks of their petty nastiness, but it reflects their immaturity and immense stupidity. Wake up and smell the coffee girls! Because Sandy is there, you NOW have the opportunity to get better and be ranked higher. You should be thanking the girl and your good fortune that she moved to your town, not mercilessly picking on her. Stop whining and start working. Sandy is your greatest asset, not your biggest liability.

So why do middle school, high school and even college athletes act like this? Why do they let their jealousies boil over and control their brain cells? One main reason: SELF-ESTEEM. I think that when you see these kinds of dynamics on a team, it's because the "little people" actually feel little inside. They do not feel good about themselves. They have very low self-esteem. It is, in fact their intense feelings of inadequacy that direct their witch hunts. If they can make that better athlete suffer, if they can make her an outcast, (For some reason you mostly see this sort of stuff happening with girls and young women. Boys and young men don't get as threatened by better athletes on their teams. While I occasionally see this situation occurring on a guys' team it is not nearly as prevalent as it is with girls), then it makes them feel just a little bit better.

If you are on a team and you see this attack of the little people going on what kind of message do you think they are sending to the rest of their teammates? Oh, it's a great message! "IF YOU GET BETTER THAN ME, THEN I AM GOING TO HATE YOU!" The little people are not making it safe for you or anyone to excel. The little people do not want you to reach your goals. Why? They are simply too selfish. They are not team players. They don't really care about you or how the team does. They are only interested in their own comfort and happiness. They would rather make a teammate miserable than get better or have the team win. They don't pass the ball to a wide-open teammate because they hate her and think she's "stuck up." They are jealous because she has already scored too many goals. They don't even care if they get reamed out by the coach for not passing the ball. You see, expressing her own pettiness and immaturity is far more important to the little people than the well being of her team or teammates.

So if you are on a team with little people listen up! Stand up! Speak out! Be courageous! Tell them to GROW UP! Do not allow the little people to poison your athletic experience. Do not allow their cancer to spread and ruin your season. Tell them to act their age! Call them on their immature, nasty behavior. Do NOT turn your back on what they are doing! Do not ignore them. Challenge their scapegoating behaviors! OPENLY SUPPORT your teammate who is being attacked. Fill the coach in on what is going on regardless of whether they call you a rat or not." The little people of the world desperately need your help. If they are not taught to grow up and act decently now, then they will end up inadvertently crippling themselves for life. Their immaturity and pettiness will get them into trouble socially and professionally. You can help them NOW! ENOUGH ALREADY. TELL THEM TO GROW UP!!!!!!!

PARENT'S CORNER

"The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree"

Where do you think our children learn to act like "little people?" Where do you think a child learns to act out her feelings of inadequacy and jealousy by mercilessly ganging up and picking on a teammate? That's right, let's take a very close look at ourselves in the mirror. Our children learn an awful lot from our behaviors and sometimes what they learn is pretty awful. Just what kind of behaviors are you modeling around teamwork, the pursuit of excellence, and having to deal with a much more talented teammate?

It is interesting that Sandy wasn't just plagued by petty little children. By itself, that would have been hard enough to deal with. No, Sandy was also picked on by the parents of those nasty little children! That's right, a number of "adults" (and I use the word quite loosely here) on the team were also openly unhappy that Sandy had joined their club. These mothers would sit in the stands during meets and make nasty comments to each other about the girl. They too complained that Sandy was robbing their child of an opportunity to get better. Some of them even made sure that this poor little girl heard the nasty, wickedly stupid things that they were saying! So is it any wonder that their children acted the very same way?

A long time ago when I was teaching tennis, two of my female students were playing in a relatively competitive challenge match against each other. Student "A" was positively kicking the butt of student "B". On a changeover, "B" confronted her much stronger opponent and complained about her "unfairness" because she was winning too many points. (and I thought I had heard it all!). "A" was so taken aback by this bizarre complaint that she lost her composure and then proceeded to lose the match! "B," a clearly weaker player, then came up to the net and thanked her stunned opponent for letting her win! Chronologically, player "B" was an adult. Emotionally player "B" was a charter member of the "little people."

Let's get something straight here about competition. First, competition is a very healthy thing for your child. Competition, when placed in the hands of appropriate adults, can help your child soar to great heights. Second, in competition there are winners and losers, just like in life. Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. Third, your child can't always win. He/she can't always be the best! As a matter of fact, chances are quite good that you'll frequently find a lot of children who are much better than your child. That's OK too. That's just life! It doesn't make you or your child any less of a person. Fourth, being the best is not the main purpose of youth sports, or most sports for that matter despite what everyone else may tell you! Striving for personal excellence is important. Giving it the best you have also counts a lot. But expecting that your child will always win, score 20 points, be the fastest, hit the most home runs, etc. is an adult fantasy that is much better left tucked away in far recesses of your mind.

Don't misunderstand me here. It's fine to want your child to excel. I certainly want my children to be winners on and off the court or field. What I am saying is that sports should not be solely about winning. If you make winning too darn important, then the behavior of the "little people" will begin to emerge. When winning is too important, people start feeling very badly about themselves when they lose. When winning is made too important, one's self-worth and ego become pathologically intertwined.

When you then lose, you end up feeling diminished, inadequate and like a failure. The athlete is then more likely to feel threatened by and jealous of a better teammate. In a defensive attempt to ward off these negative feelings and bolster a shaky self-esteem, he/she then resorts to nasty, petty scapegoating behaviors.

Keep in mind, that as a parent it is your job to help educate your child regardless of whether they are 5 or 15. It is your job to set and enforce boundaries as to what are appropriate and inappropriate behaviors. It is your job to put a stop to behaviors that reflect meanness, jealousies or poor sportsmanship. If you don't set limits around these behaviors your child will never learn to for him/herself. And, if you don't set limits, you are solely responsible doing your child a terrible disservice.

In addition, it is imperative that you teach your child to have a healthy attitude and understanding of competition. This is especially true if you are raising daughters. Girls must be taught that being aggressive, competitive and excelling are not only OK, but are healthy qualities that should be actively pursued and cultivated. You want to teach your child to have tolerance for and appreciation of the more talented athlete. You want to help your child understand that the better her teammates, the more opportunity she is presented with to excel and improve as an athlete in her own right. This is a critically important lesson to be taught. The opponent and teammate is really a partner helping out in the pursuit of excellence.

Teach your children to embrace a win-win mentality. Reassure them that if a particular teammate is better, that teammate will, in the end, be actively contributing to their own success. The issue here is that you as the parent and appropriate adult maintain a healthy attitude about this. Help your child understand that the "pie" is plenty big enough for everyone. Let me explain:

"Little people" have a win-lose mentality. That is, if you do well and are successful, they experience your success as a blow to their ego, as if somehow they have suffered a defeat. This is because in their mind, the pie is quite limited in size. If you get a big piece, that means theirs will be that much smaller. In this way your success is their failure. This is an unbelievably self-limiting and self-defeating way to approach competition and life in general. The fact of the matter is that the better your child's teammates get, the more chance your offspring has to get good. In this way of thinking, that pie has no boundaries. It contains more than enough for everyone!

Help your children grow up with a healthy view of competition and a healthy respect for their teammates and opponents. Do your part as a parent to eradicate the disease of the "little people" from the face of the sporting world. Teach your children to act with respect and tolerance towards their peers, especially if they are more talented. Teach your children to carry themselves with class.

Remember, your children don't miss a trick. They are watching you very closely. What kind of behaviors are you modeling for them? Are you training them to walk with class like the "big people" or slither along with the little people?

COACH'S OFFICE

"Don't be a wishy-washy. Take a clear, firm stand! Protect your kids and
your program."

What should you do if you get wind that the behavior of "little people" are infiltrating your team? How should you handle the athletes that scapegoat and mercilessly pick on the teammate who is better than them? This is a critically important question and how you handle this situation will dramatically determine how effective you are as a coach and ultimately how successful your teams will become.

Here's a key issue. Learning and peak performance can only be nurtured in a safe environment. Your athletes need to feel safe and supported both by you and their teammates in order to reach their true potential. When they are not concerned with protecting their social status among their peers or defending their self-esteem from frontal attacks, your athletes will then be freed up enough to channel all their physical, emotional and psychic energy into the tasks at hand: Listening to you, learning the proper technique and strategies, practicing hard and taking risks and going for it in competitions. Furthermore, when athletes are freed up in this way, they are then able to have fun training and competing. As I've said in numerous past newsletter issues, fun is a critical prerequisite for peak performance. If your athletes are having fun, they will be more motivated, more relaxed and therefore far more likely to perform to their capabilities.

However, when athletes are scapegoated, ostracized or otherwise treated cruelly by their peers, all their energy gets diverted away from training and performance and wasted in defensive activities. Since being accepted socially is such a huge need for most preadolescent and adolescent athletes, failure to be accepted knocks their world way out of alignment. The target athlete becomes preoccupied with her outcast status. The mean treatment by her peers leaves her depressed and can easily undermine her motivation to train and excel. Her feelings of isolation completely smother any fun that the sport may have provided her in the past. She is even left questioning whether it even makes sense any more to be the best.

I have seen very talented athletes in this position, being picked on by jealous and less talented teammates, who consciously decide to stop working as hard and being as good! Their rationale is simple. If I'm not so good, then maybe my teammates will like me again. Social acceptance from their peers is so important that they are willing to harm themselves to better fit in.

If these other issues don't upset you as a coach, then this latter concern of the athlete should really alarm you. Kids who pick on a teammate because that teammate is more talented spread an insidious, poisonous message on your team. If this message continues to be sent it can leave you totally frustrated and with a group of unhappy, disconnected underachievers. The message is quite simple: IT IS NOT SAFE FOR YOU TO EXCEL ON THIS TEAM. IF YOU ATTEMPT TO PERFORM BETTER THAN US, YOU WILL BE ATTACKED.

How can you preach the pursuit of excellence and the value of hard work as a coach if you have athletes on your team undermining this peak performance ethic with their petty, jealous acting out?

YOU CAN'T!!!! It is imperative that you create an environment of safety on your team. It is essential that you make it safe to excel. It is critical that you teach your athletes how to have a healthy attitude towards their more talented teammates. How do you do all this?

You must be open and direct. You must make it very clear which athlete to athlete behaviors you will tolerate and which have no place on your squad. You must be prepared to reinforce this message over and over again over the course of the season, especially if you have a group of athletes with some nasty chemistry going on between them.

Most important, you must be prepared and willing to enforce your rules regarding treatment of teammates. If an athlete refuses to follow your rules and continues her scapegoating behavior, then you must be ready to ask that athlete to leave your program.

Many coaches mistakenly believe that what goes on in the locker room or after practice or games is the athletes' business and of no concern of the coach. Don't kid yourself. Anything that affects your athletes' well being should be a concern of yours including how they are doing in school as well as how they are getting along with their teammates. Make it your business to "butt in" and learn as much as you can about your team's interpersonal dynamics. Remember, the success of your season and the individual performances of your athletes are at stake.

Keep in mind that it is not neither necessary, nor realistic to expect everyone on the team to be close friends. With varied personality differences among your squad, this would be highly unusual. What is necessary though is that despite these personality differences each athlete follows clear rules regarding the treatment of teammates. It is imperative that you help teach your athletes about the meaning of mutual respect.

In the process of doing this you might also find it necessary to educate your athletes' parents regarding this same issue. Frequently scapegoating behavior is either modeled or condoned by the parents. You may need to clearly teach your parents about the importance of a close-knit team that interacts with mutual respect and appropriate behavior. They need to understand that when there are undercurrents of conflict, the whole team will suffer. In addition, you may also have to teach your parents why having better athletes on the team will actually make their child that much better. This may be a hard lesson to learn for the overly invested parent who has had to watch his child lose his/her starting position to a more talented newcomer. Parents like this strongly resent the new athlete and tend to make their selfish feelings known to whoever will listen.

Be clear. Be firm. Enforce your rules. Take a proactive stance to eliminate the behaviors of "the little people." There is absolutely no way that your squad can become successful when the "little people" have their way. With consistent, proper and firm training, you even can help those "little people" grow up to become champions.

DR. G'S TEACHING TALES

"What "big people" really look like - The Stock Boy" (I recently received the following emailed story)

In a supermarket, the stock boy, was busily working packing shelves when a new voice came over the intercom asking for a carry out at check register number 4. Kurt was almost finished with his shift and desperately wanted to get some fresh air, so he decided to answer the call. As he approached the checkout stand a distant smile caught his eye. The new check out girl at number 4 was absolutely beautiful. She was an older woman, maybe 26 while he was only 22. That didn't matter to Kurt one bit. One look was all he needed. He instantly fell madly in love.

Later that day, after his shift was over, he waited by the punch clock to find out the new girl's name. Suddenly she came into the break room, smiled softly at him, took her card, punched out, and then left. Kurt stole a glimpse at her card. He looked at her name, BRENDA. When he walked out to go home he caught a glimpse of her as she was walking up the road on her way home. That night he couldn't get Brenda off of his mind. He kept seeing images of her at the check out and in the break room. He had to do something!

The very next day, Kurt got up his courage and waited outside the supermarket for Brenda to come out. As she left, he offered her a ride home. Since he looked harmless enough, she readily accepted. When he dropped her off, he asked if maybe he could see her again outside of work. She graciously thanked him but said that it simply wasn't possible. Undeterred, Kurt pressed her and she explained she had two children and just couldn't afford to hire a baby sitter. Kurt said that was no problem and quickly offered to pay for the sitter himself. After all, he explained to her, he was the one asking her out.

Brenda reluctantly accepted Kurt's offer for a date the following Saturday. However, when that Saturday night rolled around and he arrived at her doorstep, Brenda apologized and

told him that she was unable to go with him. She explained that the baby-sitter had called at the last minute and canceled. Kurt seemed undaunted by this turn of bad luck and simply said, "Well, let's just take the kids with us."

Brenda then tried to explain to Kurt that taking the children with them was not an option. Call it hard headedness, persistence or simply a refusal to accept "no" for an answer, Kurt pressed Brenda and asked, "why not?" Finally Brenda brought him inside to meet her children. She had an older daughter who was just as cute as a bug, and then Brenda brought out her son. He was in a wheelchair. He had been born a paraplegic and had Down syndrome.

Kurt turned to Brenda and asked, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to be dense here but I still don't get it. Help me understand. Why can't the kids come with us?" Brenda was simultaneously dumbstruck and amazed. Most "normal" men would run away from a woman with two kids, especially if one of them had such serious disabilities. After all, that's exactly what her first husband and father of her children had done.

That evening Kurt and Brenda loaded up the kids went out to dinner and then took in a movie. When her son needed anything Kurt would take care of him. When he needed to use the rest room, Kurt picked him up out of his wheel chair, took him to the bathroom and then brought him back. The kids immediately fell in love with Kurt. At the end of the evening Brenda knew this was the man she was going to marry and spend the rest of her life with.

A year later, Brenda and Kurt were married. After the wedding, Kurt adopted both of her children. Since then they have added two more children to their family….

So what ever happened to that stock boy and check out girl? Well, Mr. & Mrs. Kurt Warner, now live in St. Louis, where he is employed by the St. Louis Rams and has played himself into one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL.

IN THIS ISSUE: 

Let’s get the year off to a great start. How about we turn those pesky performance problems around? Overcoming Performance blocks, slumps and losing streaks: If you’ve played or coached sports long enough, then you know that sooner or later you’re going to run face first into a slump, performance fear/block or a losing streak. You don’t have to ever question whether this will ever happen. Instead you can simply count on it! How can I be so sure? These performance problems are a “normal” part of sports and even the very best athletes end up struggling at one time or another in their career. How you choose to handle the frustration, self-doubts, discouragement and anguish that accompany these performance problems will ultimately determine how bad the slump gets and how long it will stay camped out in your back yard. Unfortunately, far too many athletes, coaches and parents approach a slump the wrong way. Their run-away emotions cause them to push the panic button, which only makes the problem much worse. As a result, the slump or block lasts far longer than it should have. In this issue we will try to map out the best path for you as an athlete, coach and parent to follow when trying to find your way out of a slump. 

ATHLETE’S LOCKER - “How to beat a slump”
PARENT’S CORNER - “What should I do when my child-athlete is stuck?”
COACH’S OFFICE – “Managing slumps, blocks and losing streaks.” 
DR. G’S TEACHING TALES –“Just on the other side of impossible.”

ATHLETE’S LOCKER

“How to beat a slump”
 
There are two kinds of athletes in your sport: Those that have already struggled with a slump or block and those that will soon struggle! The fact of the matter is that performance problems are a very normal and common part of your sport. Whether it’s choking, consistently getting too nervous at crucial points in a performance, a slump, a losing streak, an inability to beat a particular opponent or a fear-based block, repetitive performance problems happen! In fact, in some sports like gymnastics and diving they happen quite frequently! If you’re properly prepared to deal with these when they do occur, then you’ll both minimize their negative affects and shorten the time that you end up struggling with them. Furthermore, knowing how to handle slumps and blocks will give you more self-confidence and make you a mentally tougher athlete.  

How you handle slumps and blocks primarily depends on you developing a clear, working understanding of their causes. These kinds of performance problems usually have a trigger or some event that touches them off. For example, losing a close game, striking out with the bases loaded, getting injured or experiencing a frightening near miss, having to perform in front of a huge crowd or choking under the pressure of a huge game are all examples of events that could potentially trigger a slump or block. Sometimes, however, slumps and blocks get touched off without any clear evidence of a trigger.

By themselves, these trigger events don’t necessarily cause the slump.  Striking out or going hitless 4 games in a row doesn’t even mean that you’re in a slump. The fact of the matter is that sometimes you have good games and sometimes you just simply stink the place out. That’s just part of the normal ebb and flow of sports. A slump gets started because of what you do mentally. So when you’re not hitting you start worrying about it. You’re in the on-deck circle and you’re thinking, “what if I strike out again? What if I go hitless” It’s these worries and this kind of performance focus that then sets in motion the slump. Worrying about messing up or failing tightens you up physically and distracts you from a proper focus. In addition you start trying too hard which further tightens your muscles. When your muscles are tight and you’re concentrating on the wrong things, peak performance is impossible. When you then fail again, your worry increases, as does your faulty focus leading to more bad performances as the slump cycle is off and running.

Breaking this cycle starts with you taking a “chill pill.” What do I mean by this? First, you just have to relax about not performing as well as you’d like. It happens and it’s not the end of the world! Getting uptight about your struggles will only make you struggle more. 

Next you have to recognize that you are feeding your own slump by what you’re focusing on and what you’re saying to yourself both before and during each performance. Focus and self-talk are two key elements in performance and the wrong kind of both will cause you to get stuck and under-perform. For example, if you’re a gymnast blocked on a back walkover and you keep balking, then chances are good that whenever you get ready to do this skill, you’re entertaining negative thinking, (“Oh I hate beam. Why do we have to do this? I’m going to get hurt today. What if I don’t go again? Coach will get mad at me again and yell”, etc.) as well as concentrating on what you’re afraid will happen, i.e. missing your hands, landing on your head, getting hurt. 

Slump busting is all about staying positive and being patient. You have to practice being a “good coach” to yourself. When you struggle you shouldn’t get down on yourself. You shouldn’t tell yourself in a nasty voice that you’re pitiful and should be able to do better. Putting yourself down will only further contribute to your problem. Instead you have to learn to be an ideal coach to yourself. For example, “it’s OK. It’ll come around. Take your time. You’re talented and you’ll get this. Be patient, it’ll come.” Etc. 

Being patient is critical to slump busting because impatience always feeds performance problems. If you get impatient with yourself and pressure yourself to get a skill, do better or produce, the only thing that you will succeed in is making yourself perform badly. Pressure, whether self-imposed or coming from coaches or parents almost always works to make slumps worse. Setting deadlines for yourself or threatening yourself with negative consequences for failing will NOT get you unstuck. It will, instead, only dig you deeper into that performance hole. Why?

When you pressure yourself you get into trying too hard. Trying too hard is always a losing game: The harder you try the worse you’ll do. This is because your self-imposed pressure tightens your muscles up and robs you of your timing, speed, smooth execution and just about everything else that is necessary for a good performance. 

If you want to successfully bust that slump then you must instead take all the pressure off yourself. Try to get yourself to trust your training, coaching and body. Let your muscle memory take over and let the performance happen. Sooner or later with this “let it happen” headset your normal, good performance will return.

Finally, you’ll have success busting slumps by learning how to control your focus. Specifically this means learning how to keep your concentration in the NOW. Slumps and blocks are always fed by “mental time traveling.” That is, the stuck athlete goes back and forth between the PAST and the FUTURE. She remembers the last time or two she struggled and then she worries, “what if it happens again?” This past to future focusing tightens the athlete up and makes proper execution impossible. As an athlete you can only do your best when your mind is in the NOW, focusing on what is going on right at this moment. Time traveling breeds fear and undercuts confidence. By disciplining yourself to stay in the NOW, and immediately bringing your focus of concentration back whenever you drift, you will get in touch with your true potential.  

Remember, bad performances are a normal part of sports. Even if you have a string of them, it doesn’t mean that you’re in a slump. If you think you are, relax and understand that they are normal. Try to become aware of how you may be feeding your problems by what you focus on and the quality of your self-talk. Keep yourself positive and stay away from negativity. Negativity will only fuel your troubles. Be patient with yourself and stay away from putting pressure on yourself to produce. Pressure to come up with a certain performance outcome will always backfire in your face. Instead, discipline yourself to stay in the NOW and quickly return your focus should you time travel. Try to trust yourself and get into relaxing whenever you practice and perform so that your performance happens without being forced.  

PARENT’S CORNER

"What should I do when my child-athlete is stuck?"

Under the best of circumstances it is downright brutal to watch your child struggle performance wise. This is even more the case when you know that she's capable of executing a particular skill or playing at a much higher level. There is no question that it is both perplexing and tremendously frustrating for parents to live through their child's slump or performance block.

The two main reasons for this are pretty obvious. First, as a parent you want your child to be happy. After all, isn't that what sport is all about? You're supposed to enjoy yourself, not spend two hours of practice in tears. Second, and let's be brutally honest here, you also want your son or daughter to be as successful as possible. Unfortunately, when your child is blocked by a fear or otherwise stuck in a slump he is neither having fun nor performing to his potential.

You know the scenario. They come home from practice or games absolutely miserable. Their level of frustration and feelings of helplessness are very powerful. Their self-confidence seems to be in a free fall. As a good parent your instincts are clear. You want to rush in there with sirens blaring and lights flashing and instantly make things all better. If a coach is causing the problems your unconscious instantly plays intense fantasies of revenge and retribution. You want to protect your offspring. You desperately want to help. There must be something, anything that you could say or do that would get your child unstuck and back on track.

And then there's all the confusion about why the child is having these stupid problems to begin with. Sometimes in fact, their difficulties don't seem to make any logical sense. Take the case of Jessica the gymnast who all of a sudden, after three years of doing round off, backhand spring, back tucks could no longer do them. Poof!!! Just like that they were gone. Vanished out of the gym and off the face of the earth! Of course she could do a round off and backhand spring, but no back tuck! She would simply stop before the back tuck.

The really frustrating thing for all involved was there was absolutely no logical reason for the skill's disappearance. Jessica didn't get hurt doing them. She didn't see someone else getting hurt. She wasn't dealing with the sometimes overwhelming fear that if she did get the skill, then she'd have to move up to the next level and learn even scarier skills. Here yesterday, gone today! No matter what her coaches tried, Jessica still wouldn't go for the skill!

As you can imagine, Jessica's parents were just as confused and frustrated as the coaches and their daughter. In fact, they couldn't understand what was wrong at all. Jess's dad even said that to her, "I don't understand. Why don't you just go for it? You've been doing the silly skill for years now. What's the big deal?" Of course his frustration and helplessness didn't do anything for Jessica.

Just because the skill may look easy from your outside perspective as a parent, doesn't mean it is. Just because your child had been performing it forever doesn't make their difficulty less real. If Jessica could have simply gone for it, then she would have! Keep in mind, I've have never met an athlete that wanted to have a performance problem. This is never a conscious choice!

So what should you do to help? First off, BE SUPPORTIVE. Be encouraging. Keep your own emotions, needs and frustrations out of the picture. This is not about you. It's about them! REASSURE YOUR CHILD that sooner or later she will get through this difficulty. BE POSITIVE. Communicate in your words and actions that you know in the future they have what it takes to get through this difficulty. Providing the athlete with a long-term perspective here is crucial. Knowing that at some point in the future they will no longer struggle is comforting and helps the athlete relax. Above all, BE PATIENT with your child. Impatience and pressure only adds fuel to the fire. You want to teach your child to relax and be patient and the best way to do this is to model it in your interactions with your son or daughter. Remember pressuring your child or threatening them is not helpful here. Similarly, offering them financial or other bribe-like incentives is worthless and yet another distraction that they just don't need.

If necessary, get your child additional coaching or private instruction to help them work their way through the problem. NORMALIZE the problem for your child. Let them know that setbacks, slumps, fears and blocks are all a natural and normal part of sport. Try to help them change their attitude towards the difficulty. Instead of fighting it and cursing their bad luck, try to get them to use the difficulty as an opportunity to get stronger and tougher. If available, tell them stories of other great athletes or individuals who struggled with and then overcame their difficulties. Better yet, find some real live people who have successfully been through what your child is currently struggling with. There is nothing more powerful than to have a live role model that your son or daughter can identify with.

Closely monitor the situation with your child's coach. Sometimes when a child is struggling performance wise the coach can actually make things worse. Be sure that the coach is supportive and understanding. If you notice that the coach is continually attacking your child's self-esteem, demeaning them or using humiliation, then quickly intervene. If you can't get the coach to change his behavior, immediately remove your child from the program and find them one with a healthier coach. Performance blocks and fears are difficult enough to deal with by themselves without having to also try to manage an abusive coach.

Is your child struggling with a performance problem or block? Do they perform better in practice than in competitions? Let me help get them unstuck with my personalized phone coaching service. In 6 weeks I can get them back on track. Call me at (413) 549-1085 or go to www.competitivedge.com and click on both the individual consultation and testimonial buttons for more info.

COACH’S OFFICE

"Managing slumps, blocks and losing streaks." 

Most good coaches have two overall coaching goals that influence and guide their daily interactions with their athletes. These are: To teach a love of hard work and a commitment to the pursuit of excellence. The good coach knows that athletic and personal success is impossible without totally embracing both of these values. As a result, these coaches have very little tolerance for half-hearted efforts from their players. In addition the successful coach has a very difficult time with any athlete who tends to accept mediocrity. 

Like any professional, good coaches are very aware of and sensitive to the feedback that they receive for their efforts. This feedback comes in the form of skill and performance changes within their athletes and teams. As athletes and teams improve, the coach gets a clear sense of how effective he or she is as a teacher. The feedback also comes from other coaching colleagues. It comes from the athletes' parents. It comes from the media and fans. And, unfortunately, a ton of feedback comes to the coach in the form of the team's won-loss record.

I say unfortunately here because a coach's won-loss record does not necessarily tell you whether that coach is competent or not. While most everyone else, (the fans, media, parents and other coaches) will tell you that the coach's winning percentage is a clear indication of his or her talent, this is not always the case. I know of many "winning" coaches who were nasty, selfish, abusive individuals. They treated their athletes as nothing more than objects to help them win a championship. They didn't really care about the well being of the athlete. They weren't able to separate their own ego from that of their players. These coaches used fear and humiliation as teaching tools. While their records may show that they were winners, in my book they were losers. The irony of this is that all too frequently these "successful" coaches are awarded "coach of the year" honors. Obviously this choice is completely based on the won-loss record. 

What happens to a coach when his team struggles with a losing streak? What goes on inside the coach when his athlete inexplicably slides into a slump? How does a coach feel when his athlete's performance is suddenly blocked by totally irrational fears? 

There is no question that performance problems and slumps challenge the patience and sanity of even the best of coaches. However, how you as a coach respond to these team or individual athlete problems will oftentimes determine whether the slump or block gets worse or disappears completely. What can you do as a coach to insure that your athletes and teams quickly put that slump or block behind them?

First off, understand that despite what the media, fans or parents may say about you, your value and effectiveness as a coach is NOT necessarily determined by your athletes' performance problems. If your team slips into a losing streak this does not automatically mean that you are a terrible coach. Losing is a result of a number of uncontrollable factors including luck, the skill and strength of the opposition, injuries, the officiating and the individual talents and headsets and individual psychologies of your players. Certainly if you yell and scream at your athletes, threaten them with adverse consequences should they fail to perform to your expectations and continually pressure them with an outcome focus, then you will indeed be directly responsible for their poor play. 

However, all too often performance problems just happen regardless of who you are or what you do or say as a coach. What's critical here is that when they do, you learn to separate your self-worth and ego from your athletes' performances. If you measure your self-worth by how they perform, or whether your team wins, then sooner or later you will end up inadvertently pressuring them to win more. Remember, coaches who coach winning consistently lose. Having an outcome focus is a huge performance trap! When your athletes pick up your need to win, they will most often tighten up and underachieve, regardless of how much they'd like to please you. 

When your athletes do struggle, perhaps the most powerful thing that you can do is to very clearly  communicate to them that you still believe in them and their ability. The opinion that you hold of your athletes matters very deeply to them. Belief, after all, dramatically affects an athlete's performance. In fact, an athlete is always limited most by what he/she believes is possible. A brief example: 

A high school senior third baseman started the season the way he had left off the previous year, hitting a torrid .480 and batting lead off. Midway through the team's 32 game schedule his hitting started to falter and he slipped into a slump. No matter what he tried he couldn't seem to shake himself free. His batting average soon dropped below .200. Discouraged and frustrated, he began to seriously doubt himself and question his abilities. One afternoon he approached his coach before a big game and said, "Coach, I'm not doing anything for the team. I'm consistently letting the guys down. I want you to move me out of leadoff." The coach looked at him and said, "Thanks for the advice son. However I do want you to know something. You were my leadoff man when the season started and you will be my lead off man when the season ends. Now get out of my office. We have an important game to play!" The athlete went out onto the field knowing his coach believed in him. That was all it took to free him up and help him believe in himself again. As a consequence he forgot about his hitting woes and went 3 for 4, knocking in 5 runs to help his team win big over a cross-town rival. End of slump.

When your athletes struggle, another key stance that you must adopt is to stay positive, no matter what. Being negative will not inspire your team to start winning. It will NOT help an athlete overcome her fear or bust out of that performance slump. A negative attitude will undermine motivation. Let's face it. Nothing good comes from negativity. Negativity disrupts a proper focus, increases the athletes' stress and kills your players' competitive spirit. When coaches are negative the whole team is brought down. No matter how frustrated you may be with your athletes it is crucial that you stay positive and optimistic. After all, if you as the primary adult and team leader can't remain positive, then no one will be able to, and all will be lost. Remember, adversity can't be mastered and setbacks can't be overcome without you maintaining a positive attitude.

Above all, be supportive and patient with your athletes that struggle. Impatience will rarely help an athlete or team get unstuck. Instead, your athletes will tighten up more with the pressure that you put on them when you're impatient. Understand that the athlete who struggles quickly gets down on himself. Your dumping on him also will only make things worse. Your support in these situations is absolutely critical. Ignoring or withdrawing from the struggling athlete will send their self-esteem and performance further down the proverbial tubes. 

Help your athlete or team to refocus. Athletes and teams that struggle naturally have a tendency to become obsessed with and over-focus on their problem. This gets them trying too hard to get unstuck. You can never bust a slump or overcome a fear by trying too hard. Instead you want to help refocus your athletes on what they need to do in order to perform to their potential. Encourage them to focus on what they want to have happen. Give them specific concentration goals that they can focus on during their practices and competitions. These concentration goals should be "process", not outcome related. For example, staying calm before and during the performance (so the athlete may focus on a relaxation technique pre-game), keeping low and moving the feet on defense (basketball), making sure my stroke stays long and smooth, each and every stroke of the race, (swimming), concentrating on the rhythm of my arm swing or the feeling of my shoulders relaxed (running), making sure my hand stay together and feel the beam, (back walkover, gymnastics) are all example of process related goals. Outcome goals would be, going 3 for 3 today, scoring 15 points, shutting out the other team, etc.

One main concentration key to slump busting is to help your athletes keep their focus in the NOW of the performance. Struggling athletes have a tendency to "time travel" from the past to the future both before and during their performance. Peak performance can only happen when the athlete's mind is in the moment, focusing on what is going on RIGHT NOW. Encourage your athletes to leave the past behind them, forget the future and concentrate on what is right in front of them. 

DR. G’S TEACHING TALES

“Just on the other side of impossible” 
 
Do you really know what you’re capable of accomplishing? Do you really know your limits? Are you robbing your potential by kidding yourself into not going for things because you think the tasks are impossible for you? No matter how bleak things may look, no matter how low you’ve sunk, no matter how much your back is up against the wall, on the other side of all that despair and hopelessness your dreams are waiting.

No matter what anyone else says, NO matter how intense your self-doubts, DON’T EVER QUIT.  DON’T EVER GIVE UP. Sheila Taormina “quit” at least 8 times on her way to finally making the US Olympic Swim and winning a gold medal in 1996. Beset by doubts along the way, rejected by the US Swimming’s resident team and having failed every previous attempt to even final at Olympic Trials, Sheila refused to believe that her dream was impossible.

St. Louis Ram’s quarterback Kurt Warner lives a similar story. A mediocre college player Warner was not chosen by any of the NFL teams in the draft. Instead he played Arena football and stocked shelves in a supermarket on the graveyard shift. No one gave him a serious chance to play in the NFL. However, Warner refused to give up on his dream and got himself an opportunity to play backup in St Louis. When the starting quarter back went down early in the season, Warner took full advantage of this chance and proceeded to have a dream season capped off by a Super Bowl win and MVP honors.

Don’t you ever, ever give up on yourself. People are doing the impossible every day. Right at this moment, as you’re reading these very words, someone is out there proving the critics wrong yet again and turning the tables on their life and making their dreams come true. Listen only to your heart. Stay true to your goals and aspirations. Don’t listen to the experts who have nothing better to do than to rain on your parade. Ignore the critics because they know nothing. As Dale Carnegie once said, “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain, and most fools do.”

Take pleasure in pushing your envelope. Continually question and challenge your self-limitations. Limits, after all, have one purpose in a winner’s life. They exist only to be challenged and broken. Enjoy proving those who doubt you wrong. Use their negativity and doubts as fuel for your motivation. Act as if there is no impossible. The word is simply a creation for those who don’t take risks.  The same holds true for handicaps. We all have them in one form or another. They could be physical or mental and for far too many people they serve as nothing more than an excuse to not reach your full potential, to not truly go for it. The list of champions who have had debilitating handicaps is endless and covers every sport imaginable: The NFL Hall of Fame kicker born with a clubfoot. The fastest female runner in the world born crippled and told she’d never walk. The multiple gold medal winning swimmer who had debilitating asthma reducing her lung capacity by a third of normal. The NFL Hall of Fame back-fielder who was 40% disabled after having part of his right foot blown off in Vietnam. The little boy, so badly burned by a fire that his doctors told his mother that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair who went on to become the world’s fastest miler. Let’s get more specific:      

Let me tell you the story of a little girl named Shelly, back in the days when a horribly crippling disease called polio wreaked havoc on young bodies. When she was just five years old Shelly was stricken with this dreaded disease. For a time the little girl was almost completely paralyzed. She could scarcely move a muscle. She couldn’t even stand up by herself. As therapy her doctor recommended that the girl be brought to a local swimming pool. The thinking was that perhaps this would help her get a little strength back into her dead arms and legs.

The buoyancy of the water held the crippled girl up. A major triumph came the day she was first able to lift her arms out of the water. She was overcome with tears of joy. She then set a goal for herself to swim the width of the pool. When she finally accomplished that, she went after trying to swim the length of the pool. As she reached one goal, she set another, more difficult one. First she swam one length of the pool, then two lengths, three lengths, four lengths….

Shelly Mann, the little girl so crippled by Polio that she couldn’t even move      
went on to become one of the early greats in American swimming. She held the world record in the 100 and 200meter butterfly and won a gold medal in the 100meter butterfly at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. 

Remember, slumps and blocks happen. Setbacks and injuries happen. However, on the other side of these dark moments is the bright sunshine of success. On the other side of impossible is triumph!

IN THIS ISSUE: 

COMPASSION: A common word that many people don’t quite understand yet the mark of all great athletes and coaches. Compassion is one of those little known qualities that contribute to mental toughness and success in the athletic arena. Want to be a winner? Then you have to have the quality of compassion. What does this really mean? Compassion means that you are able to forgive. If you have dreams of becoming a successful athlete, you will never be able to turn those dreams into a reality without being able to forgive yourself (or your teammates) for mistakes and failings. As a coach, your effectiveness with and ability to inspire and motivate your athletes rests in how much compassion you can muster up for them when they stumble and fall. In addition, you must be able to forgive yourself when you fail. A parent without the ability to forgive a child, is a parent in the biological sense only. Good healthy parenting and teaching is all about compassion and forgiveness. Peak performance depends on compassion. In this issue we’ll discuss why. 

ATHLETE’S LOCKER - “Want to become a champion? Then, you’d better                learn to forgive yourself!”
PARENT’S CORNER - “Raising a healthy, happy child-athlete.”
COACH’S OFFICE – “Shame, humiliation and embarrassment as advanced motivational techniques for coaches.”  (Yeah, right!)
DR. G’S TEACHING TALES –“A powerful act of coaching compassion” 

ATHLETE’S LOCKER

“Want to become a champion? Then you’d better learn to forgive yourself!”

Most serious athletes are totally committed to the pursuit of excellence. They know in their heart of hearts that in order to become the very best, they have to push themselves to the limit and strive for perfection. There is absolutely no question that this drive to excel is largely responsible for these athletes’ ultimate success. As they strive to be #1, these competitors hold themselves to a higher standard than most of their opposition. Simply put, they expect a great deal from themselves and these expectations motivate them to scale new heights. 

How can you possibly expect to become a champion without high standards anyway? Well, you can’t! Along with these high standards, you’ll also find that champions do not like it one bit when they fall short of their intended expectations and goals. Failures and mistakes do not sit well with these individuals. They hate failing with a passion. Mess-ups drive them crazy and motivate them to work twice as hard to make things right. However, it’s within their failings and mistakes that you will find the most significant difference between winners and wannabe’s, between the best and the rest. While winners demand perfection from themselves and hate falling short, when they do so, they adopt an entirely different attitude towards themselves than their less successful counterparts. 

Specifically, the most successful athletes have learned to be compassionate to themselves when they fail or mess up. Simply put, they have learned to quickly forgive themselves for their failings, take away any important lessons from these setbacks and then move on. It’s this one, key emotional ability to forgive yourself for your shortcomings and screw-ups that will ultimately determine how successful you are in turning your athletic dreams into a reality.                                                                   

Far too many, very talented athletes take their striving for perfection to an unhealthy level. Not only do they expect the best from themselves, but also when they fail to measure up to their own unrealistic standards, they immediately respond with harsh criticism and unrelenting self-putdowns. For days and weeks after a sub-par performance these athletes emotionally beat up on themselves. “You suck! You don’t deserve to be on this team. The team lost because of YOU! You let everyone down. I can’t believe you dropped that pass! You made a total fool of yourself in front of everyone!” They are own their harshest critic. They are completely unforgiving, unfair and unrealistic in their negative assessment of themselves. What these athletes fail to realize is that their demand for perfection and an inability to forgive and forget will ultimately cost them their success.

As an athlete you have to learn to accept something very basic about yourself: You are human. No more. No less. You may think that you walk on water, but sadly, you don’t! You are not a superhero. You are not larger than life. You have your strengths and weaknesses, your good points and bad ones. 

Because of your inescapable humanness, sooner or later you will make mistakes and fall short. This will happen more than once. As a matter of fact, it will happen quite a bit. Why? Well, that’s sports and that’s life! Things don’t always go the way that you’d like them to. You can’t always have a great performance. You can’t always win! Deal with it! Screw-ups happen to everyone. In addition, because of your humanness you will sometimes do incredibly dumb things. By definition, being human means that you are imperfect, that you have a license to do dumb things. Therefore it is critical that you develop the ability to forgive yourself.

However, before you do, it’s important that you understand a few things. First, forgiveness does NOT mean that you must suddenly settle for less. It does NOT mean that you have to lower your standards and accept mediocrity and sub par performances. You can and should still go after the big enchilada. You can and should still set really big, scary goals. What it does mean is that when you slip up and fall, you have to quickly pull yourself back up, dust yourself off and encouragingly pat yourself on the back to keep going. Kicking yourself in the butt for falling or ridiculing yourself for being a completely uncoordinated klutz will do absolutely nothing for you other than to erode your confidence and bring you and your dream crashing down.

Is what I’m asking you to do easy? No way! Being kind to yourself and forgiving yourself for your mess-ups, losses and failures is wicked hard work. To get good at it you will have to learn to become hyper-aware of your typical “inner coaching” whenever things don’t go well. When you become aware that you’re trashing yourself, you need to immediately stop. How? You have to talk or “coach” yourself out of it. You have to remind yourself that coming down hard on yourself will only slow down your progress as an athlete and kill your confidence. If you really want to get good, then you need to forgive yourself for your shortcomings, learn from your mistakes and then forget them. Remember, forgiveness and compassion are personal traits of champions. Accept your humanness. Be compassionate to yourself. Practice forgiving yourself and you’ll become a winner.   

Develop mental toughness with your own personal “head coach.” Call Dr. G at (413) 549-1085 for more info on his personalized phone coaching service. If you’re stuck in a slump or struggling performance wise I can get you unstuck and back on track!

PARENT’S CORNER

“Raising healthy, happy child-athletes”

Shame is an interesting parenting tool when you stop and think about it. My father was well schooled in it, frequently using it on me and my siblings throughout our formative years. Whenever we did anything that he considered bad or wrong his responses were always humiliating and shaming. What I don’t think he ever really understood was how damaging it can be when you consistently respond to your children in this kind of unforgiving way.

By it’s nature, shame is an emotional response that emerges out of a feeling that you’ve done something terribly wrong. In fact, your transgression is so terrible, that it is beyond forgiveness. There is absolutely nothing that you can do to change the circumstances and right the wrong. This is what shame is. It is a personal, emotional response to a situation in which you know you cannot be forgiven for your behaviors. In this way, shame communicates to the child that he has broken the lovability bond of the parent-child relationship, that his behaviors are so heinous that they have made him unlovable. In this way shame goes far beyond embarrassment because shame is inescapable always lingering with you while embarrassment is easily gotten over. How does the “shame-worthiness” of a child’s behavior get communicated to him/her? Quite simply! By how the parent responds to that child’s behaviors on an everyday basis.  Specifically, shame gets transmitted when a parent refuses to forgive the child.

Keep in mind that children have no real perspective about just how “awful” their behavior actually is. Frequently, because of their own unresolved psychological issues, parents have a tendency to blow some of a child’s behaviors completely out of proportion. I’m assuming that’s exactly what my father must have done with us. Lord knows my dad sure had a few control issues! As an adult I can look back and see that all those “shameful,” terrible things that we supposedly did as children were absolutely normal. We were just being kids, and relatively easy ones at that! None of us turned out to be bank robbers or ax murders. However, I did turn out to be a psychologist, which, I suppose, is almost just as bad.   

Do I think my father consciously wanted to emotionally cripple his children in this way? Do I think he wanted us to go through our lives feeling that what we did was so bad that we couldn’t be forgiven? 

Do I think he deliberately wanted us to feel unlovable? Absolutely not! He probably learned his shaming techniques from his mother when he was a kid. I’m quite sure that he was brought up in much the same way he brought us up. Furthermore, he probably didn’t have a clue as to what he was doing with us. But that’s beside the point. The fact of the matter is that bringing up children in an environment of shame, in a home that’s devoid of forgiveness is criminal as far as I’m concerned. Not that I have strong feelings about this!

If you want to raise emotionally strong, healthy and happy kids it is critical that you and your spouse/partner not allow shaming behavior into your home. There is no place for shame in a loving, nurturing environment! Shaming is not an acceptable form of parenting. EVER!  Furthermore, there is nothing your children could ever do, behavior-wise that would warrant them to be shamed or rendered unlovable. Instead, you want to raise your children in an environment of support and forgiveness. You want to openly communicate to them that everyone makes mistakes and that regardless of the mistake, forgiveness is always available to them. Forgiveness for mistakes and misbehavior is also a critically important part of the learning process. 

This does not mean that you have to accept all of your children’s misbehaviors without saying or doing anything. This does not mean that you shouldn’t discipline your children. It does not even mean that you should never get angry with them. Raising children is probably one of the most emotionally evocative things that you’ll ever do in your life. There will always be times when your children push your emotional hot buttons and get you responding in less than helpful ways. However these times notwithstanding, you still need to discipline yourself to respond to your children in a supportive, compassionate way. You must try to communicate to them in all your interactions that your forgiveness and acceptance of them is always an option and that their lovability as a child and person is never at stake.    

This is an especially useful stance to take because one critically important lesson you hope to teach your children is how to forgive in their own lives. Modeling forgiveness in your house as they grow up will teach them to not only forgive themselves when they’re older, but also bring it into their own home once they’ve matured to adulthood and have children of their own. Furthermore, teaching your children how to forgive has an extra, added bonus for you as a parent. Just as they need you to forgive them for their transgressions when they are children, you will need them to forgive you for all your parenting mistakes while they were growing up.

Think back to your feelings about your own parents. Did they ever make any mistakes with you when you were a kid? Duhhhh! Of course they did. That’s what parenting is all about: Screwing up! Many of us take very strong feelings of hurt, resentment and anger into adulthood for all the things are parents did to us that we wished they hadn’t and for all the things they never did for us that we wished they had! Becoming an emotional adult is ultimately all about learning to forgive your parents for their humanness and failings. It’s about eventually letting go of all of those old resentments and hurts. When your kids have matured into adulthood and have families of their own, you will hope that they are able to forgive you for all your failings as a parent. Give them a good start on tomorrow, today. Be compassionate and forgiving in all your dealings with them.       

COACH’S OFFICE

“Shame, humiliation and embarrassment as advanced motivational techniques for coaches.”  (Yeah, right!)

How’s this for a motivational style? Excerpt taken from our annual competition for the Coach Of The Year selection: “C’mon ladies, let’s move it! What’s the matter with you? Don’t want to get your nails dirty today? Ms. Smith! Is it that time of the month or something? Did you not get enough beauty sleep last night? Would you rather be playing with your Barbies instead of being out here? And that’s supposed to be a sprint? My little boy could outrun your big fat ass! You ladies just sicken me! You call yourself a football team! You’re all just a bunch of pussies! I should have you ladies going to school wearing skirts on game day because that’s how you play.”

You guessed it!  The above candidate is certainly one of our frontrunners for Coach Of The Year honors. Why? Because this high school football coach has distinguished himself among his peers as a great “motivator.” He’s truly a man’s man, a builder of “real men.” A brilliant psychologist with an uncanny understanding of his players’ psyches, he’s able to provide them (according to him) with exactly what they need. This would probably explain his stellar 1 and 7 record and the fact that every year since he’s been coach, 5-6 players have quit the team, (Our candidate explains, “They just couldn’t hack it. They were babies!”). Add to this the fact that he’s a tremendous communicator with an extraordinary sensitivity to his players’ feelings and we have the complete package! Can you spell Neanderthal?

Why is it that so many male coaches (it’s truly rare when you see this kind of abusive, clueless package in a female) still think that the best way to motivate their charges is by using shame and humiliation? I certainly understand that this was a widely accepted coaching stance in prehistoric times. But today, when people are supposed to be much smarter and more highly evolved? Give us a break please!

Shaming your athletes will not make you a better, more effective coach. Humiliating the individuals on your team will NOT get them to perform to their potential. If you think that this is simply your brilliant use of “reverse psychology” (‘I put the athlete down and motivate him to rise up and prove me wrong’) then you’re living in the dark ages! You may certainly get a few players to respond to your tactics, but in general your use of shaming, demeaning behavior will make you and your athletes big time losers.

The main problem with channeling your frustration with your athletes into shaming, demeaning behavior is that it ultimately will kill your players’ enjoyment of the sport and dampen their motivation. If your athletes are not having fun when they practice and play for you, they will never, ever compete well. Worse yet, by treating your players badly, you communicate to each and every one of them that you do not respect them. Now, in your heart of hearts you may sit there and kid yourself into believing that you do indeed respect them.  However, if you consistently shame or deliberately embarrass your players then you do NOT respect them. This is simply not a respectful way of treating others.  

So maybe you think, “So what! They have to earn my respect!” Be careful here!  There is probably no one more powerful motivator for an athlete than the coach’s respect. At every level in sports, from little league to the pro’s, athletes want to be respected by their coaches. If you openly respect an athlete, that individual will run through walls for you. He will be motivated to do whatever it takes to get the job done. However, if you don’t respect your athletes and you openly communicate this disrespect to them, then you are setting both them and you up for some serious failure. You might want to reconsider this “earning respect” thing by first starting out giving them the benefit of the doubt and respecting them.          

So what’s my point here? A simple lesson in Sports 101: Your athletes and teams are going to let you down. They’re going to disappoint and frustrate you. They’re going to blow the big play or miss that critical opportunity. They’re going to blow the lead and lose the game. They’re going to choke. They’re going to come up short again and again. Why? Because that’s what sport is all about! Your team and athletes will not always be at the top of their game regardless of how brilliant a coach you are. How you deal with your athletes’ mistakes and setbacks, their failures and losses is absolutely critical to your effectiveness as a coach and a motivator. Yell all you want. Get angry and rant and rave! You have my blessings! Just don’t use shame and humiliation as a coaching tool when you decide to lose control.

Forgive your athletes for their shortcomings. Forgive them for their mess-ups. Demand excellence from them, but don’t lose your mind and emotional control when they lose. Try to keep the bigger picture in mind. Your most important job is not just about developing a winning record. It’s about developing winners: Developing individuals who are self-respecting, who respect others, are team players, good sports, who can handle both victory and defeat gracefully and who are willing to put it all on the line and go for it. In short, your job as a coach is all about developing individuals with winning characters. You do this by who you are and how you carry yourself on the field. You do this by how you treat each and every one of your players. You do this by being compassionate and forgiving every day. 

If you dismiss what I’m saying with the lame argument, “if I’m soft on them, then they’ll get soft on me, you’re completely missing the point. Developing mentally tough athletes is not a product of how abusive you are. It’s a direct product of what kind of leader you are and who you are as a person. Lighten up. Be supportive. Drive your athletes hard but be forgiving. It’s the best way that I know of developing motivated champions.   

DR. G’S TEACHING TALES

“A powerful act of coaching compassion”

There was 18 seconds left in the 1982 NCAA Division I men’s basketball season. It was a Monday evening in late March as Georgetown point guard and freshman Freddy Brown brought the ball up court in the final act of March Madness, the NCAA Championship Game. There were some 70 thousand fans in the arena and millions more watching on TV all across the country. The Hoyas were down by one point to the North Carolina Tar Heels in a game that had been hard fought the entire way. With the ball in their possession and center Patrick Ewing under the basket, Georgetown had plenty of time to set up a final play and therefore a good shot at winning the national championship. This was just as Hoya coach John Thompson had planned it.

What happened next was utterly bizarre and downright confusing. As Freddy Brown brought the ball up past mid-court, North Carolina forward James Worthy apparently got caught behind him and off to his right. Some say Worthy used an old school yard trick and yelled to Freddy Brown, the wrong man, to pass him the ball. Whether this happened or not, or whether it was simply a product of all the pressure finally getting to the freshman, Brown turned towards James Worthy and flipped him the ball.

Before anyone could figure out what had happened Worthy sprinted the half court distance and laid the ball in for a three-point lead and the national championship as regulation time expired. The North Carolina Tar Heels wildly celebrated their victory while the Hoyas were stunned. Freddy Brown, totally devastated by his championship-costing mistake, hung his head and dejectedly walked off the court in shock. What happened next was as unpredictable as Freddy’s costly mess-up.

Coach Thompson walked over to Freddy, the kid whose bonehead play had just cost him a national championship, wrapped his huge arms around his young point guard and hugged him, telling him to forget about it, that everything would be OK, and that he’d get another chance! 

Can you imagine what would have happened to poor Freddy if he had played for Bobby Knight, the infamous chair throwing coach, touchy-feely coach?  No question Bobby Knight would have wrapped his arms around old Freddy but I sure don’t think he would have had any warm fuzzy feelings inside that would have led him to hug the dejected young man. More likely Knight would have wanted to squeeze the life out of the kid that had just blown his chances for a national championship. And you can bet your life that Knight would not have reassuringly said to Brown, “That’s OK son, you’ll get another chance!” More likely a Knight-like coach would have said something like, “Son, that’s the very last time you’ll ever play for me again!” 

John Thompson’s ability to forgive Freddy Brown for this, the most visible and humiliating mistake he could have possibly made in the very biggest game of his college career is a measure of Coach Thompson’s character. Rather than shaming his young on-court team leader, which might possibly have driven Brown out of the sport, Thompson did the right, compassionate thing. He immediately and spontaneously forgave Freddy in front of all those fans and in front of all those millions of television viewers. I wonder what you would have done if you were in Thompson’s position. Would you have been able to keep your wits about you and think about the young man’s feelings instead of your own? Thompson’s act was truly self-less, the behavior of a winner.

Getting and giving forgiveness is critical to healthy emotional and psychological development and ultimate success in life. Without getting forgiveness from others you will never learn from and get over your failures and setbacks. You will never feel free enough to put it all on the line and really go for it. Without giving forgiveness to others you will live a lonely life filled with bitterness and regret. I say lonely because people who can’t forgive ultimately end up pushing people away from them. Without being able to forgive yourself, you’ll never ultimately feel that you’re good enough, that you’re a success. Learn from John Thompson. Keep the bigger picture in perspective. Be compassionate with those around you. Be compassionate with yourself.

Two years later when Freddy Brown was a junior, Coach Thompson once again hugged his starting point guard after another championship game. This time however, it was a celebratory hug because Brown had just led the Hoyas to the national Championship!

IN THIS ISSUE: 

PERFECTIONISM is the scourge of human performance. It's the wolf dressed in sheep's clothing, a villain masquerading as the good guy. It's truly ironic that your drive to be the best can frequently turn into the one biggest roadblock to your success. Like a double-edged sword, your push to be perfect, when controlled, can cut through obstacles thrown in your way and clear a wide-open path to your athletic dreams. However, when perfectionism runs rampant and starts to control you, it can cut your self-confidence to shreds, kill your motivation and send your performance down the tubes. Perfectionism will suck every ounce of enjoyment and satisfaction out of your sport. If you let perfectionism run your life, your two closest friends will be intense feelings of inadequacy and depression. In this issue we will take a closer look at the immensely destructive nature of this obsessive drive to be perfect.     

ATHLETE'S LOCKER - "Perfectionists are far from perfect!"
PARENT'S CORNER - "Is your perfectionism hurting your child?" 
COACH'S OFFICE - "Stop and smell the roses" 
DR. G'S TEACHING TALES -"An obvious choice" 

ATHLETE'S LOCKER

"Perfectionists are far from perfect"

One of the characteristics that I see in all great athletes is that they possess a burning desire to be the best. Their inner drive to rise to the top fuels these athletes' efforts and keeps them going when the going gets rough.  This desire motivates them and helps them discipline themselves to continually keep pushing outside their comfort zone. 

An integral part of this drive to be the best is an intense dissatisfaction with mistakes and mediocre performances. In fact, many top athletes are unhappy with anything short of perfection. Why? Because these athletes feel that they can always do better than their best. As a result they are continually looking for and dwelling on the things that they've done wrong so that they can make them right. 

Now on the surface, this may look like a wonderfully positive trait to have. After all, why should you be happy with making mistakes or being just average? A real winner certainly doesn't feel fulfilled as an athlete with sloppy performances! Besides, isn't constantly hunting down your weaknesses and continually trying to improve them a great success strategy? In fact, isn't that the only way to turn your dreams into a reality? 

Certainly, being dissatisfied with mediocrity and honestly looking for, and working on your weaknesses is a sure-fire success strategy. There's no question that you can't become a champion without adopting this kind of approach. The only way that you can truly get stronger as an athlete is by strengthening your weaknesses. Furthermore, having little tolerance for mistakes will also help you raise the bar on your overall performance. If you're always pushing to be better, sooner or later you will be! Right?

Well, yes and no! There's absolutely nothing wrong with dwelling on and fixing your mistakes. However, there is something very wrong with being so obsessed with being perfect that you are never satisfied with your performances and efforts regardless of feedback to the contrary from your coaches, parents, friends and teammates. If you continually expect yourself to be perfect, you are setting yourself up to fail BIG TIME!!!! Let me explain.

If you truly want to be successful as an athlete, then you have to understand that perfectionism is a double-edged sword that can cut both ways. Simply put, when harnessed constructively, perfectionism can effectively cut through the obstacles and hardships you're confronted with in your life and clear a wide-open path to your dreams. Having what I call "healthy perfectionism" will get you to continually reach higher and higher until you indeed achieve a level of personal excellence and success that is truly fulfilling. 

However, when used destructively, perfectionism can cut your self-confidence and self-esteem to shreds. It will sabotage your performances and kill your dreams dead in their tracks! When you turn the sword of perfectionism on yourself like far too many athletes do, you will also kill the fun and enjoyment that the sport used to bring you. If you're competing without the fun and enjoyment, then there is one thing that I can guarantee you: You will NEVER perform to your potential! Enjoying what you're doing is a necessary prerequisite of peak performance. No fun, No excellence! It's that simple! This so called "unhealthy perfectionism" we're discussing is a very serious disease that will leave you de-motivated and bumming big time! 

So what is this destructive use of perfectionism? "Unhealthy perfectionism" has three interrelated components: First, the athlete always focuses on what he actually did (or thinks he did) wrong regardless of how well the rest of his performance went or feedback from the outside to the contrary. Second, the athlete measures her "imperfect performance" against a perfect ideal that in reality doesn't even exist! (There is NO PERFECT in sports or life!) Third, the athlete then ruthlessly beats himself up emotionally for these mistakes, failures or bad performances.

It's these three nasty habits of over-focusing on mistakes, thinking your performance wasn't good enough compared to an unrealistic ideal and then emotionally beating yourself up for your "failings" that totally destroy your self-confidence and leave you feeling depressed. Let's briefly look at each of these components. Think about this: If you only dwell on what you think you've done wrong in a performance and you make this the most important thing on your mind, then you'll always struggle with low self-confidence. If you play great, but make one or two mistakes, and this is where you put all your energy, "I can't believe I blew that! That was so bad! I'm so much better than that! What's wrong with me," then you'll leave that particular performance feeling like a loser. In this way perfectionists distort reality. They perform well but come away from the game feeling like they didn't! 

When you do this to yourself you are a crook! You rob yourself of the opportunity to feel good about yourself. You rob yourself of confidence! If you are continually focusing on your mistakes and shortcomings, you will be blind to what you actually accomplish. This is an awfully nasty trick to play on yourself! 

When you combine this negative distortion with a tendency to continually measure your performance against an unrealistic, perfect ideal, you'll struggle even more with low confidence and self-doubts. As a result, you'll be continually plagued by feelings that whatever you do, it just isn't good enough. In the end, these feelings of inadequacy will paralyze you and leave you feeling depressed and hopeless. The fact of the matter is that there is no perfect in sports. We are all human, and by definition, being human means being imperfect. It means that sometimes you are going to have sub-par performances. You are going to make mistakes. Sometimes you're just going to suck! That's life! Deal with it! It's fine to strive for perfection in everything that you do. However, expecting yourself to be perfect is flat out foolhardy, and will bring you nothing but heartache in your life.

The last "killer" component of this unhealthy perfectionism threesome is a tendency to emotionally pound on yourself. The perfectionist is exceptionally hard on herself. When she messes up or falls short, she is ruthless and mean in her self-assessment. "You suck! You don't even belong on this team. You're so bad! I don't know why they're giving you a scholarship to play here! And you call, yourself a D-I athlete!" 

If you have a tendency to get this down on yourself I'd like to offer you a bit of advice. Getting angry with yourself when you mess up or fail will NEVER, EVER help you get better. It will NOT motivate you onward to improved performances and it will NOT help you avoid costly mistakes in the future. On the contrary! Getting down on yourself when you make mistakes will only make you more uptight, distract your focus of concentration from the game or match, and further erode an already shaky self-confidence. 

Your job when you make mistakes is to learn from, and then forget them. When you fail, you must forgive yourself and then leave that failure in the past. Dwelling on your screw-ups will only lead to more screw-ups! Accept the fact that you're going to make mistakes. Accept the fact that you can always be better. Accept the fact that there is no perfect. Accept your humanness. Strive to be perfect while at the same time, forgive yourself of your imperfections.

DON'T LEAVE THE MENTAL PART OF YOUR GAME TO CHANCE!
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PARENT'S CORNER

"Is your perfectionism hurting your child-athlete?" 

At the biggest meet of the season she actually did it! She finally reached a lifetime goal. Ever since she was an 8 year old and had just started swimming, she had wanted to compete at Olympic Trials. As a very young swimmer her club's team had taken a trip to see this big meet and she had instantly gotten hooked, mesmerized by the excitement and intensity of the struggle to make the US team. Sure, getting to the Olympics would be even cooler. But she figured she'd cross that bridge when she got there. First step, The Trials! 
 
Now here she was, all these years later looking up at the scoreboard at the race's end in utter joy and disbelief. She saw her lane number and the time right next to it, but the numbers must be wrong somehow! What she was looking at was an Olympic Trials qualifying time! She kept blinking to be sure that her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. She thought that she must be dreaming! She had made the cut in her best race, the 200-yard freestyle, swimming the fastest time of her life!!!! She saw her coach celebrating on the deck, heading towards her with a huge smile and when he swallowed her up in his signature bear hug, she realized that it must be so. She actually had done it! In an instant as she got out of the pool she was swarmed by happy teammates who hugged her and "high fived" her. It was at this point that it finally hit her. She dissolved into tears of joy, laughing uncontrollably while the tears streamed down her face. She had never been happier or more proud in her life! 
 
She excitedly called home that afternoon right before they boarded the plane for the flight back. Unfortunately all she got was the answering machine, so she left the results and times of all her races, including her Olympic Trials qualifying time in the 200-yard freestyle. She couldn't wait to get home and secretly hoped her parents would meet her at the airport to help her celebrate. 
 
The flight back home was a joyous blur although she couldn't stop the tears of happiness. The plane's captain had even announced over the PA system that they were carrying an Olympic Trials qualifier. Everyone on the flight applauded which both embarrassed her and filled her with pride. Even her coach got a little teary as they talked about her achievement and everything that it had taken. They both flashed back to all that she had gone through over the years to achieve this unbelievable goal, all the struggles, setbacks, disappointments, sacrifices and then all that gut-wrenching work, all those brutal mornings when she had dragged herself out of bed at 4:15am half asleep to train. It had all paid off and now she was flying on top of the world. As they reviewed it all together more tears came. Soon both were laughing and crying.
 
Her excitement only grew as the plane finally descended, landed and taxied to the gate. As she looked out the window she thought she spotted her mother standing there in the big plate glass window by the gate. She collected her carry-on baggage and both she and the coach headed off the plane together. As she came out of the jet way she spotted her mother standing in the crowd and she and the coach headed towards her with big smiles.
 
It was weird, but for some reason her mom's smile looked forced and her hug felt stiff. It was as if the woman was trying to be happy. However, that illusion lasted all of three seconds and was shattered when her mother opened her mouth. What she said and the way that she said it froze both daughter and coach in their tracks, shocking them into disbelief. It was actually quite incomprehensible that the woman could have responded this way. 
 
"What happened to you in your 100 Butterfly? Your time wasn't very good!"   
Her tone was nasty and accusatory implying that the girl had gone and done something terribly wrong. Mom was clearly displeased that her daughter did not swim fast enough in her other top event! Well there's an intelligent, compassionate response! Both coach and daughter were speechless! 

What's wrong with this picture? What happened to the, "Honey, I'm so proud of you!"? How about the, "Olympic Trials!!! WOW!!! That is absolutely amazing!!! Way to go girl! You are the cat's meow! You are the doggie's Woof!!?" No, mom couldn't think to say any of these normal, expected responses because she had a wee bit of a problem with perfectionism herself.       Can you begin to imagine the damage that your perfectionism will do to your child? Let's take our swimmer as an example.
 
Obviously both the girl and her coach were devastated by mom's reaction. Who in their right mind wouldn't be? What this mother basically said to her daughter with this response was, "your making Olympic Trials is not good enough and means nothing to me because you still had a "bad" race in another event." Talk about raining on someone's parade! This mother is a criminal! She is a thief! She just stole her daughter's moment of glory from her and her coach. Her actions and words were like a knife that cut through her daughter's self-esteem and confidence. How dare she!!!?
 
This is not at all unlike the parent who looks at his son's 95 on the history test and gives the boy a hard time about the one or two questions he got wrong. The message that you give your children when you get "perfectionistic" on them by ignoring their small or larger victories and focusing on their "losses" is that you think that they are not good enough. 
 
Reading this you may sit there and protest! "No, I'm just trying to make her better!" "I'm doing this for him because he has so much potential!" B.S.!!!! You may think that you are actually helping your child "excel" or "improve." You may look in the mirror and convince yourself that you have "noble" intentions. However, the real meaning of your communication is not in your intentions at all, but in the response that you get from your child. Put yourself in this swimmer's shoes. How was she supposed to feel with a mother who responded this way? 
 
Don't kid yourself! Being perfectionistic with your children is NOT going to motivate them to become more successful, happier people! Instead, what you're doing is hitting your child with a nasty one-two punch! First off, you ignore what success the child had, and tell them that regardless of what they accomplished, it's just not good enough. Now there's a message that builds self-esteem! Second, and far more damaging, you teach your child to do the very same thing to him/herself. That's right! If you get in the habit of continually "raining on your child's parade" by always focusing on what he supposedly did wrong, while ignoring what he did right, you will pass this nasty, self-esteem killing behavior on to the next generation. That way, whenever your child does achieve something noteworthy, she will dismiss it in her own mind as "nothing" (just the way you did to her) by finding fault with herself somewhere else. Who knows? If you really get "lucky" your child might do the very same thing to his kids when he has a family!
 
The end product of this nasty habit of never being satisfied with what you do is depression, poor motivation and low self-esteem. After all, why should you bother trying hard when whatever you do just isn't good enough? 
 
Please understand! Perfectionism is a poison. It's a serious addiction! Don't force-feed it to your kids! Instead catch them doing things right. Celebrate their small victories. Recognize the hard work and effort that they are investing in their activities. Cheer them on! And finally, stop trying to make them better by illuminating all their shortcomings. That's not your job! Instead, that job belongs to the coaches. If you insist on ignoring my words and still taking this role on, I can promise you that sooner or later, it will backfire in your face with disastrous, long term consequences.

COACH'S OFFICE

"Stop and smell the roses"

One of the biggest problems that I see in sports today is our obsessive preoccupation with winning and being number one. Don't get me wrong! I like winning as much as the next guy. And by itself, striving to be the best is not such a bad thing. On the contrary! I think it's incredibly valuable to be in the habit of organizing your life around hard work and the pursuit of excellence. As a result, you and your athletes will ultimately achieve more. However, when you continually demand and expect perfection of yourself and others, when you come down really hard on both yourself and them whenever they fall short, you'll be setting yourself up for a lot of sub-par performances and a bundle of misery. 
 
Because of the nature of your job as a coach, you are continually under a tremendous amount of pressure from a number of fronts. First off, you're probably grossly underpaid. Most coaches don't exactly make the big bucks. Second, like far too many coaches, you're probably under-appreciated. Coaches always seem to get tons of feedback whenever they are doing things wrong, and rarely hear about it when they do things right! Furthermore, you are often expected to win all the time and when you don't, you tend to catch a lot of flak from all your "supporters." In addition, your skill and effectiveness as a teacher is constantly measured by how much you "produce." Therefore, people wrongly assume that you're not a good coach unless you have a winning record. And finally, one other added benefit to joining the coaching profession: There are very few jobs out there where you get to have highly qualified "Joe Public" evaluate your job after every single practice and game. 
 
In an unforgiving way our sport-crazed society demands that you be perfect. The news media, fans and parents all expect you to be a "real" winner, i.e. to produce a winning record. As a consequence, you are put into an unenviable, no-win position. When your team does win, several possible outcomes occur that directly or indirectly diminish your victory. First, your win was expected and therefore you get less credit for it. Second, maybe the "experts" find something to criticize in your victory; for example, you didn't win by a large enough margin. Or maybe your team just played poorly according to them. Third, some of your coaching decisions were considered to be suspect by all those in the "know." Or, worse yet, the "experts" frequently take away your victory by asking you to focus on the next game, the next opponent or the next competition. In other words, when you succeed, you're allowed about 20 minutes to actually savor the victory before someone asks you, "So what are you going to do for me tomorrow?" However, if you lose, you catch all forms of hell.
 
There's no question that our sports dominated culture leans towards the perfectionistic. Truth be told, we are never satisfied with anything short of an unrealistic, perfect ideal. For example, in the 2000 Olympics we got to see swimmer Summer Sanders become the most decorated female swimmer in history when she won her 7th and 8th gold medals. However, someone started an idiotic undercurrent that Summer's medals did not mean as much because they were only from relays and not individual events. Does this bizarre way of reasoning mean that individual athletes who participated in a team sport on a gold medal winning squad should also feel diminished because they didn't win an individual gold? Please!!!!! Give me a break!!!! Being an Olympic athlete means that you are in an elite group of the best athletes in the world. Winning a gold medal of any kind means that you and your team are considered to be the best in the world.   
As a coach, it is important that you resist falling into the perfectionism trap with both your athletes and yourself. Just because others may try to force their unrealistic standards on you, doesn't mean that you have to pass their idiotic and performance-disrupting approach on to your athletes. You, above everyone else should know that there is no perfect in sports. Continually expecting perfection and refusing to settle for anything less is a dead end that leads to unhappiness, poor performance and ultimately burnout.       
 
What does this specifically look like? When your athletes or team perform well, reinforce them for it regardless of the outcome. Catch them doing things right. There is no more powerful form of motivation than positive reinforcement and feedback. Yes, they probably could have done better. In fact, you can always do better. However, continually dwelling on an athlete's or team's shortcomings and mistakes will only erode confidence and kill motivation. Don't be stingy with your praise when your players perform well. Don't have unreasonable parameters of how you measure what's praise worthy and what's not. If you do, you won't be helping your athletes become stronger. On the contrary! You'll be slowly weakening them. 
 
Use this same kind of reasoning with yourself. Do not expect yourself to be perfect. Do not highlight and over exaggerate your shortcomings as proof that you have failed to reach this ideal. Push yourself to be the best, but then forgive yourself and your athletes when perfection is not achieved.  
 
There is a wonderful example of the futile quest of perfectionism in Greek mythology. Sisyphus was a mortal who was punished by the gods for his wrong doings with the following task. He had to push a huge round boulder up to the very top of a hill. To get the boulder up there, Sisyphus had to exert a tremendous amount of effort. The gods told him that once he got the boulder to the top, he would be finished with his punishment and could return to his normal life. Unfortunately for Sisyphus, however, there was no end to this task. Once he reached the top, the boulder immediately rolled down to the other side, causing him to have to begin the whole process all over again. Since the top of the hill was rounded and the boulder would always roll down one side or the other, Sisyphus could never really successfully accomplish his job. He was therefore cursed for eternity pushing the boulder up one side of the hill and then another.  
 
This is a perfect metaphor for the destructive quest for perfection. Simply put, there is no perfection in sports. It is an impossible ideal. Strive to be the best but don't expect it. Get your athletes to pursue excellence and perfection, but don't expect it!

DR. G'S TEACHING TALES

"An obvious choice"

You figure it out! The answer should be pretty obvious to you if you use your head. Who else but this kind of person and soccer player could get herself a full four-year scholarship to a powerhouse Division I college, the school of her choice? When you think about it, this is no small accomplishment given that only 1 in every 250 high school seniors gets an athletic scholarship! So you can probably begin to imagine what kind of individual it takes to achieve such a prestigious goal.
 
A long time ago I worked with these two athletes. They were really quite interesting. Janice was a winner from the get go. Even as a young kid you could see that she was unbelievably focused and had a strong commitment to excellence. Boy, was she passionate about soccer! On her very first travel team, as an 8 and 9 year-old, she was a superstar, not only out hustling and outplaying everyone on her team, but every player on every other team in the league. That first year she set all kinds of league and club records for goals scored and assists. Her coaches loved her because she was always eager to learn, and so what if she hated losing and occasionally it made her upset. I don't know many really good athletes who actually like it! Besides, the coaches loved her intensity and competitiveness, feeling that this is what made Janice special. Janice was indeed a rare talent and the kind of kid who had the potential to go on to play professional soccer.         
 
Donna, on the other hand was the exact opposite of her cross-town rival. She was a pretty good athlete herself at a young age, but she was so much more laid back than Janice and seemed to be far more concerned with the latest gossip and having fun than she was with playing serious soccer. There were a number of times both in practice and at games when Donna was seen to be "touring La La Land," as her coach put it, joking around, smiling and laughing, as if she wasn't really into the game. Don't get me wrong here. Donna still managed to play some pretty good soccer. However, any good coach would've easily seen Donna as your basic "airhead." How could you think otherwise, watching her interact with her team right before and during games? Even if the game was important and pressure packed, there was Donna being a clown! I know for a fact that this would sometimes drive her coaches to distraction. They even benched her a few times until she could pull it together. After all, how can you expect to play well when you just seem to be out to lunch? 
 
When the girls were twelve they both made their ODP team. Actually, quite a few coaches were surprised that Donna had been selected. Her reputation as being too "fun loving" and not "serious enough" had preceded her. A number of coaches strongly felt that she should have been passed over for someone with a little bit less skill than her but who was far more serious about the game. These coaches reasoned that the more serious player would learn faster and make a more positive contribution to the program. However, at the last minute the head coach kept Donna on the roster because he "liked her energy." One assistant confided in me after the selection process and said, "You know, the kid's really a twit and doesn't belong on this team! She's taking the spot of a more deserving player." The funny thing about all this was that Donna could actually play the game. Sure, she wasn't the best player in her position, but in and around the jokes she did work hard.  
 
On the other hand, choosing Janice for ODP team was the biggest "no-brainer" for the entire coaching staff. She was hands-down the best player out on the field and a unanimous selection. By now, her competitiveness and intensity had matured and very few girls that age could match her aggressiveness and skill level. The coaches also started to recognize Janice's on-field leadership ability. When teammates messed up she was right there with feedback about what they needed to do better. It's true that Janice's intensity occasionally colored the tone of the message to her mates. After all she had a serious commitment to excellence and wanted her teammates to share this with her. And it is also true that Janice would sometimes get frustrated and impatient with herself whenever she messed up. However, the coaches saw this as a positive sign. They felt that she set a powerful example for her teammates and contributed to raising the level of play of the entire team.        
 
By freshman year in high school both girls had begun to distinguish themselves as fine athletes and good players. Janice continued to be one of the best players in the State and her work ethic and quest for excellence seemed to propel her to the top. She was the starting striker for the varsity as a freshman and led the team in points. College scouts had started coming to the team's games and she began receiving letters of interest from some of their schools. The varsity coach especially loved Janice's competitiveness and push to be the best. When she made mistakes, like any really good athlete, she'd get angry with herself because she knew she could do better. This seemed to motivate her to work even harder.  When the team lost it was the same thing. Because she was an intense competitor, Janice hated losing with a passion. She took responsibility for these losses reasoning that as the team's leader, she should have done more to help the team change the game's outcome. Therefore on the bus rides back after a loss, Janice brooded about what she did wrong and what she could do better next time. The coach truly admired her intensity and standards. In his mind there was no question that he had a real winner in Janice.
 
Donna didn't start as a freshman, but she did make the varsity squad. By mid-season she had played her way into being one of the first players off the bench. She was getting a fair amount of playing time and seemed to be making a positive contribution to the team. She was well liked by her teammates and still her happy-go-lucky self. Before games she joked around as usual which tended to annoy the coaches just a bit. When she made mistakes, like Janice, she too was the first to take responsibility for them. However, one thing seemed to really bother the coaches. Donna never seemed that upset by her mess-ups and the team's losses. She refused to hang her head after bad games and continued to joke around. Once, on a team bus ride back after a particularly tough loss, Donna stood up and said, "C'mon guys, let it go! We'll get' em next time...It's only a game!" Then she began singing a silly song. Before her teammates could join in, the head coach yelled at Donna to sit down and shut up. He also added that if she cared more about the game, perhaps the team wouldn't have lost today! 
 
It is true that to become a real champion you have to really care about what you're doing. Taking things too lightly just won't help you get to your dreams. Furthermore, blowing off your failures too quickly sure looks like you don't take your commitment very seriously. That's why it seems pretty obvious to me who ended up with that full ride to college. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.   
 
By senior year Donna had gained a little bit of ground on Janice. She too was the starting striker on her team and an on-field leader. However, as good as she was, Donna was still behind Janice physically, tactically and technically as a player. Janice was just simply a better all around player. There was, however, one very critical area where Donna outshined her friend. An area that was so important, it made all the difference in the world. 
 
And that's why it didn't surprise me at all to get that excited phone call from her letting me know that she had signed a letter of intent with a D-I program. She had been awarded a full, four-year scholarship to play for her favorite team! She was pumped!!!! The head coach had even personally called Donna himself to congratulate and welcome her to the team.   
 
You see, the one area that Donna seemed to consistently outshine her rival was mentally. Her fun-loving, devil-may-care attitude had served her well over the years. She had learned to bounce back quickly from her mistakes in games and to keep the wins and losses in perspective. Janice, being the perfectionist that she was, had less and less tolerance for her mistakes and the team's losses through high school. Her play in both junior and senior years had suffered because she would get so down on herself whenever she messed up or didn't perform to her potential. As good as a player as she was, she had no confidence in herself what-so-ever because she continually felt "not good enough."  What coaches saw as her intensity and competitiveness over the years was really part of the problem. She just couldn't tolerate losing or being less than perfect.   
 
And that was always the funny thing about Donna. Most coaches misread her joking, "that's OK, no big deal" attitude towards the game. They mistakenly thought she actually didn't care and was just a goof ball.  Nothing could have been further from the truth. The fact of the matter was that Donna cared immensely about soccer. It was and had been the most important thing in her life. Like Janice, Donna had a tremendous commitment to excellence. She too hated losing. However, she had also learned early on that mistakes and failures are a normal and important part of the learning process. That, in fact, without failure and mistakes an athlete can't get better. Unlike Janice, she had also been taught that expecting perfection from yourself and beating yourself up when you fall short of this is a destructive addiction that will kill your confidence and wreck your game. Donna had learned early on to forgive herself for her mistakes. She had learned to not take herself so seriously. As a consequence she had become a phenomenal player and a wonderful teammate. And that's why she's playing D-I ball right now!