Strengthening Your Mental Core:
Mastering Mental Conditioning
Luis Valdes, Ph.D.
Module 1: Introduction
The Winners’ Manifesto
“What we are asking you to do is not easy. If it were, everybody would do it. There will be nothing in your life-time that can compare to the challenge you are about to embrace. Some of you won’t make it. Some of you can’t take it. There will be some of you who will try to hold the others back because you don’t want to pay the price.”
A Quick Introduction to Mental Conditioning
What you will learn from this book is that you do not have to be the most physically gifted or most talented athlete on the field or in the arena to be highly successful or competitive. You will learn how to be the most successful you can be by developing the mindset that will allow you to perform at the highest level possible while also continuing to learn, grow and develop your skills at a high rate.
This mindset will also be helpful in achieving maximum enjoyment and satisfaction in your performance. Isn’t that why you started playing your sport in the first place?
Rather than fixating on your genetically-predisposed talent or ruminating about your programmed real, imagined or perceived weaknesses, you will come to understand that your skills and abilities aren’t etched in stone. They change. They are malleable. Your level of success is influenced and ultimately determined by what you believe about your potential and the mental messages that you provide yourself about your performance, both currently and in the future.
With the right mindset, your current skills are irrelevant. You will improve over time if you put in the time to learn the appropriate skills, strategies, and frameworks necessary for your given sport(s). However, it is your mindset that propels you towards continuous improvement, excellence, and success. Your mindset must be tended to and cultivated. Your mindset is a learnable, teachable set of skills. It is a set of tools for you to use, maybe the best tools you have at your disposal.
In the physical world, weight training is thought to involve bringing your muscles to some level of failure and fatigue in order to build muscle strength. However, weight training also involves learning. Your muscles and your neuroanatomy must learn how to and when to move, the direction of movement, the frequency of movement, as well as the intensity and duration of each movement. Muscles must learn to work in collaboration and in a coordinated fashion in order to perform certain tasks required of each situation. This is often referred to as muscle memory.
The same holds true of your mindset.
Mental Mastery: Becoming a Student of the Game
“To study the self is to forget the self.” -- Dogen, 13th century Japanese Zen Buddhist.
An important aspect of being an elite athlete requires that you be a student of your particular sport. This book is about that process, but also about the process of becoming a student of the self. This endeavor is much harder, but much just as useful if not more useful. This study of the self allows you to be all you can be.
For that, you need to understand the mental aspects of athletics and the world of competition.
Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, Inc., in his book Shoe Dog, described a meeting he had with General Vo Nguyen Giap, at the time 86-year old Vietnamese Army veteran. During that meeting, Knight asked the general about his successes in battle in which his troops were able to defeat the Japanese, the French, the Americans, and the Chinese. He reflected thoughtfully and said, ”I was a professor of the jungle.”
In this book, we will look closely at these “jungle” tools and help you integrate them to strengthen your mental core.
Phases in the Mental Conditioning of Peak Performing Athletes
In order to best understand the process of mental conditioning, we suggest that there are four general phases in the mental conditioning of athletes.
1. The Educational Phase - this phase primarily involves the understanding of the complex and sensitive nature of behavior change. Change is complex and elaborate, and, thus, understanding change is crucial to enhancing the performance potential of athletes. This phase also involves the understanding of the self-regulatory processes involved in personal performance and the experience of preparation and competition. This phase includes the identification of external events that trigger thought, emotional states, bodily sensations and corresponding behavioral responses.
2. The Mindfulness Phase - this phase involves focusing on the importance of internal experiences and the value of non-judgmental, present-moment awareness. This phase also requires the exploration of individual values and beliefs, action-mapping, and acting in line with individual values.
3. The Acceptance Phase - this involves the deep recognition of the true difference between emotions, feelings, thoughts, and behavior. It requires the athlete’s reflection on internal language (cognitions) and behavior; and, finally the acceptance of emotions and events rather than the attempt to control them.
4. The Integration & Practice Phase - this last phase involves a focus on the development of skills through an emphasis on rehearsal and deliberate practice scenarios in training sessions, competitive settings, and other learning scenarios. This phase of conditions often can be applied and generalized to life situations as well as sports. This phase emphasizes and reinforces the development and reinforced application and acquisition of skills. Learning in this phase requires neural and behavioral “rewiring” for performance improvement and enhancement.
Your Mental Core
“Everyone lines up for the peak experience, but no one does their push-ups on Monday morning.” -- Jamie Wheal, founder of the Flow Genome Project.
The word “core” in the physical fitness and conditioning world has become a popular buzzword. Like the physical core, there is also a mental core related to your emotional and mental conditioning. Physical core training is about increasing power, strength and stabilization. So, is the training of your mental core.
Many fitness buffs often think only of sit-ups and crunches as the secret to strengthening the core. True fitness experts know that there is much more to the core than an impressive six-pack.
Similarly, many athletes and coaches think that the mental core is simply just about developing mental toughness (the equivalent of a mental core six-pack). In many instances, mental toughness is thought to be improved by simply putting individuals in the most grueling and difficult (not to mention dangerous situations). If the individual endures the extreme conditions, the assumption is made that they have become “tougher.” The developing one’s mental core is much more than what has traditionally been called mental toughness.
The mental core creates a solid, fundamental, and broad base for your overall mental fitness and, thus, your subsequent ability to perform successfully.
So, what constitutes your mental core?
The mental core consists of:
Internal Dialogue/Self-Talk - Simply put, these are messages an athlete or performer gives to him/herself about: him/herself, opponents, teammates, his/her coach, and fans. Self-talk also includes what an athlete says during practices, during performances, in games, during time-outs, or after games.
Confidence - This key skill refers to the belief one has about his/her ability to learn and improve as well as about his/her preparation and performance skills to consistently achieve positive and productive results.
Preparation Skills - Elite athletes need an understanding of the intricate learning process involved in the development of skills necessary for the mastery of successful performances.
Pre- and Post-Performance Recovery Skills - Here, emphasis is placed on a recovery mindset. This mindset provides the opportunity to fully recover mentally from performances and competition, which is just as crucial as physical recovery is to peak performance. Managing stress is a skill that requires a full understanding of the process of recovery.
Resilience - Elite athletes need to quickly and fully bounce back from setbacks and failure, to deal with adversity, to learn from mistakes and to effectively put one’s mistakes behind them. Resilience has been found to be important for injury prevention and injury recovery.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) - This competency is defined as the ability to: recognize, understand and manage one’s emotions (including performance anxiety and fear of injury or failure), as well as recognize, understand and influence the emotions of others, before, during, and after practices and performances.
Systems Thinking - This is a particular mindset that requires the awareness and understanding of the matrixed complexity, interrelatedness, and connection of multiple environmental, situational, physical, emotional, and mental factors involved in one’s performance.
Mindfulness - This broad set of skills includes mental imagery and visualization, relaxation and meditation skills, and focusing and centering skills. These skills are useful in deliberate rehearsal, preparation, performance, recovery and evaluation activities of athletes and coaches. In particular, mindfulness approaches have been found to improve post-performance recovery, and injury prevention and recovery as well as reduce performance anxiety.
Note that there has been increasing evidence that body language is important in performance. So, be aware of your body language; however, I have seen increasing evidence that body language is more of an indicator of the strength of your mental core than a factor or component of the mental core.
Some of the best mental conditioning techniques have come from non-major sports rather than the traditional major sports such as baseball, basketball, and American football. Some of the best innovations mentioned in this book have come from such sports as soccer/football, cricket, swimming, golf, and tennis.
This book will help you assess these core components of your mental core. Let’s start by identifying your mental core strengths and limitations in each of these areas. Let’s focus on and leverage your strengths while also learning more about how to shore up your limitations. We can learn to use these basic skills to build a foundation for strengthening your mental core. Let’s get down to training!
Are You in the Right Mindset?
“When you toughen yourself from inside out, you must know that the results can take months, even years to show. And that is a great responsibility to bear." -- Virat Kohli, India's beloved cricketeer.
The common notion is that sports psychology and mental conditioning are about developing athletes’ mental toughness and designing the “perfect” athlete.
Practically speaking, my experience with the most effective techniques in working with athletes involves the development of the proper mindset for success. For an athlete to develop total mental toughness, he/she must be able to deal with adversity effectively.
This ability is less about striving for perfection and more about developing emotional resilience. This coping skill includes the ability to use mistakes, failures and losses as learning opportunities and moments for improvement and growth. This is particularly true of the activities involved in the training and development of young athletes.
The ability to learn from setbacks and recover from failure is a key component of a champions’ mindset. To understand this aspect of mental conditioning, one must understand the key difference between practice and competition. During practice as well as game situations, athletes must be able to bounce back quickly; however, during practice, athletes must be encouraged and be willing to be more vulnerable to mistakes and failures as various drills and rehearsals are attempted. Practice is the time to get out of one’s comfort zone. Practice is the time for learning. Games are the time to perform.
Practice is a time for expectations to be about rehearsal, refinement and adjustments. Game situations and competition should be about execution. Too often, coaches as well as athletes maintain the same expectations for games as they do for practices. This can create much confusion and anxiety in both coaches and athletes.
Coaches must take the time to understand the difference in situations and take into account when they are developing and shaping performance versus when they are in execution mode.
Are you always clear about the distinction between training goals and performance goals?
Prior to Game 4 of the 2015 NBA Finals, Head Coach Steve Kerr of the Golden State Warriors, made a change in his starting line-up. He replaced Andrew Bogut with Andre Iguodala. That move along with a change in defensive strategy and a change in his substitution rotations, made all the difference in the world.
Although the Cleveland Cavaliers got off to a 7-0 start at the beginning of the game, Kerr did not panic nor throw out his game-plan. Instead, the Warriors called a time-out, quickly bounced back and finished the quarter by outscoring the Cavs, 31-17. Kerr made a crucial decision, but more importantly, he made a commitment to the strategy for Game 4. He did not waver. The strategy paid off in a 103-82 win to tie the series, 2-2.
Working with elite and aspiring athletes, performers and other professionals at all levels for years, I have come to a recent revelation or refinement concerning the art of mental conditioning.
This revelation is about our mindset consisting of five basic modes. Mental conditioning is enhanced when we understand each mode, its proper timing and its function within our personal performance enhancement system.
1. Experimental Mode
2. Deliberate Rehearsal Mode
3. Preparation Mode
4. Performance Mode
5. Evaluation Mode
To cut to the chase, most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, are in constant evaluation mode. We are taught, hardwired and socialized to be in evaluation mode. We live in evaluation mode. We measure, we assess, we predict, we criticize, we worry, we comment--24/7. That’s the way we roll.
How’s it going? How’s it coming? How am I doing? Am I getting there? Did I get there? Am I there yet? Are we there yet? Why aren’t we there yet? What’s wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? Why are things going wrong? Here I go again. Am I behind? Where should I be? Who’s ahead of me? Am I losing? Am I winning? What do I need to do to catch up? I can’t catch up. I knew I should have worked harder. Is this a mistake? I’ll never get this right.
Evaluation mode is solidly embedded in our self-talk. By the same token, most self-talk keeps us in evaluation mode. In evaluation mode, our self-talk tends to get very harsh very quickly. Staying in evaluation mode too long or at the wrong time creates anxiety, self-doubt, and, even worse, panic. If you are anxious, most likely, you stayed too long in evaluation mode.
Because of this tendency to over-evaluate, we don’t really learn or value the four other modes. We tend to stay in evaluation mode due to our fear of failure. It promotes hyper-vigilance. Our over-use and over-reliance on evaluation mode keeps us anxious and prevents us from being in other equally important modes. Most importantly, we don’t sequence our modes correctly and in a way that puts us in the best position to succeed.
Here are the five modes:
Experimental Mode: This mode requires experimentation and trial-and-error. In this mode, we try new behaviors and get feedback about possible feasibility, usefulness or utility. This mode provides the opportunity to experiment, to dabble, to invent, to create, to try something new. This is where we allow for and even encourage mistakes. This is where we study our craft. In this mode (and only in this mode), we have the luxury of getting out of our comfort zone. This is where we get information about whether this new behavior is worth rehearsing.
Deliberate Rehearsal Mode: This is the mode that takes our successful experiments from Experimental Mode and turns them into muscle memory. This is where we repeat, repeat, repeat. We hone our craft, we improve, we focus on getting things just right. This is where we sharpen our swords. We rehearse until we get it right and then rehearse some more until we can’t get it wrong. This is the mode that gives us information that we have the necessary competence to be successful and the confidence to perform. Here we rehearse the skills to execute the necessary sequence of behaviors to reach our goals.
Preparation Mode: This mode is about getting ready to perform, both physically and mentally. This mode focuses on our mental conditioning as well as being the time to plan and organize. When here, we structure our time and energy in such a way that we develop our plan of action and commit to its proper execution. Here is where we focus on our mental imagery, our visualization, and get in the right frame of mind and achieve the optimal level of arousal. This mode is a transition mode from practice and rehearsal toward performance mode. It allows us to be in the best position to achieve peak performance.
Performance Mode: Game-time! Simply put, this is where we execute. If in the proper mindset, we follow our plan and allow our muscle memory to take over. Adjustments are minor or minimal in this mode. We have planned well, have committed to our plan, and let the plan work. Most importantly, we are not in evaluation mode. If we allow ourselves to get in evaluation mode during our performance or our game, we will become distracted, particularly by our self-talk. If we get into evaluation mode, our self-talk will get involved and that will engage our brain’s cortex. That mental chatter will likely become a distraction. It will disrupt our muscle memory and reduce our game-time speed and efficiency in decision-making. This does not mean that we are unaware of situational variables, but we maintain our overall game-plan. Performance mode basically requires us to suspend our analytic mind and focus strictly on performance. It is the mode in which we want to be “in the zone.”
Evaluation Mode: This mode is most effective as a post-game activity. It re-engages our cortex. It allows for more complex post-game problem-solving. It occurs and should occur following a performance or event. It allows us to objectively and dispassionately assess our performance, our game-plan, our stepwise progress, after the fact. It allows us to gather data about our ability to execute our plan. It allows us to determine what we did well, what we need to continue doing, what we need to improve or develop, and what we need to eliminate. Most importantly, it allows us to get back to Deliberate Rehearsal Mode, armed with important information about what more we can do to improve.
So, be more mindful of being in the appropriate mode at the appropriate time and make sure you stay out of Evaluation Mode (our current default mode) when you should be in one of the other four modes. Your mental conditioning and your performance will improve significantly as a result. Just ask Steve Kerr!
Many mental conditioning coaches and sports psychologists have begun to emphasize positive self-talk. It is considered an important tool in the attainment of peak performance and a key component in the mindset necessary for peak performance. However, most experts are pretty simplistic in their use of positive self-talk: just say positive things to yourself and don’t say negative things. Unfortunately, most coaches have few specifics about exactly what to say to yourself and when.
In my Peak Performance blogpost on June 12, 2015, I discussed the peak performance mindset.
I also alluded to the importance of self-talk in each of the modes. I now want to introduce the idea that each mode requires a different set of specific self-talk statements. The statements themselves are related to what needs to be accomplished in each mode.
In experimental mode, the focus is on experimentation and trying new skills. Here, you are gathering data on what works best and what is most effective. What else can you do? This mode is typically used in individual, solitary, informal workouts or warm-up drills. This is the mode where it is most important to challenge yourself and get out of your comfort zone. This mode is for creativity, experimentation, but is not the point at which you commit to making a change in technique or mechanics. You are being open to the change process, but have not committed to make a specific change. You are trying new things. For some athletes, this is the mode that is most fun. By definition, in this mode your self-talk requires the use of such internal self-statements as:
OK, I am in experimental mode. I am experimenting. I am being creative.
Time to throw things at the wall and see what sticks.
Let’s see what happens when I try to do this.
Let me see if I can do this.
How about if I try this?
What if I adjust this skill just a little?
I am going to alter this for now and see how it feels.
I don’t care how this looks.
I am just trying this on for size.
Mistakes and failures are to be expected right now.
I enjoy the challenge of learning
It is important for me to get out of my comfort zone.
In deliberate rehearsal mode, the focus is learning. It is about the application of successful experimentation. In this mode you are trying to apply new skills and incorporate that with which you have experimented into your skill set. In this mode, as a result of experiments, you have committed yourself to making a specific change or changes in your skill or routine activity. You want to change or improve your technique or mechanics and get comfortable with it. Most importantly, you also want to commit the new or changed skill to muscle memory. The goal is mastery. In rehearsal mode, your self-talk should sound like this:
It’s time to rehearse. It’s time to sharpen my sword.
I like this new technique.
This new technique will improve my overall game.
I am committed to mastering this new skill.
As I practice, this new skill will get comfortable over time.
I will practice this new skill until I master it.
I enjoy implementing a new technique into my arsenal.
I am getting comfortable right now.
It is time to practice until I can’t get it wrong.
Apply, lather, rinse, repeat (In other words).
Ok, now, in preparation mode, the focus is increasingly mental. You are installing and maintaining confidence, getting mentally ready. You have exited experimental and rehearsal modes and you are transitioning mentally. You are reminding yourself of all the hard work you have done. You get yourself ready to perform at the highest level possible. This mode includes time to mentally visualize your success through the process of imagery. You should spend considerable time visualizing the successful execution of what you have rehearsed. In preparation mode (otherwise called pre-performance mode), your self-talk should include such statements as:
It is time to get mentally ready
I have physically prepared to the best of my ability.
I am committed to what I have rehearsed.
It is time to execute what I have practiced/learned.
I am ready.
I can see myself successfully executing my plan.
I have done this over and over again.
I know what to do.
My body is prepared to perform.
My mind is calm and relaxed.
It is time to slow my breathing down with full, deep breaths.
Time to make the donuts.
In performance mode, the focus is on execution. Your opportunity to perform is at hand. In this mode, the mind should be at its most quiet. Muscle memory has taken over and the brain “chatter” is minimal. In performance mode, your self-statements should be very basic. When you make a good play, you should be saying;
Good play. Good job.
I like that.
Just like I practiced it.
Yes, I can do this.
That is why I worked so hard.
Practice sure paid off.
More of the same to follow.
I can do this again and again.
If you make a mistake, you should be saying things like:
OK, back to normal.
Reset.
Erase.
Recover.
Move on.
Reboot.
Breathe.
OK, so what about evaluation mode? This is the mode that most people stay in the most and have the most difficulty exiting. Most of our self-talk tends to be evaluative in nature.
You may have noticed that in each of the previous modes, there is little to zero criticism or evaluative statements. That is because there should be little time for evaluation in all the other previously listed modes. Evaluation mode comes after a practice session, rehearsal or after a game, performance or event. You needn’t clutter the other modes with evaluation. Evaluation mode is the time to say:
How did I impact the game today?
How did I influence what happened today?
What did I do well?
What do I need to keep doing?
What do I need to do more often?
What do I need to improve?
What can I do to get better?
What do I need to do less often?
What things do I need to stop doing all together?
What did I learn from my performance today?
Did I have fun?
What was enjoyable about my game today?
What is the next thing to master?
Evaluation mode is a good thing, but only at the right time. The evaluative process in any other mode is distracting and only provides unfocused chatter that is not useful nor conducive to peak performance.
You may also notice that evaluation mode is not harsh, is not blaming, is not name-calling. It is not a time to beat yourself up. It is time to look objectively at your game and take a productive learning approach. This is how you get better. This is how you learn and this is how to achieve sustainable performance increases. This is how you succeed. This is how you master your craft. This is how you build confidence.