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"The InnerMost Game"
by Dr. Richard H. Siegel
''Focus. Focus. Focus!'' ~ Tiger Woods
More and more Coaches around the Country, from the U.S. Olympic Committee to most every Professional league are now acknowledging the reality that after physical ability, winning is 90% mental ability. As a result, Sports Psychologists and Performance Enhancement Trainers have become increasingly popular in the last decade. During the 1988 Olympic games in Calgary, there was only one Sports Psychologist working with the Olympic team. During the 1996 Games, the U.S. Olympic Committee hired 100 Psychologists.
Tony DiCicco, US Women's Olympic Soccer Coach, publicly stated that the psych-support his team received was essential to winning. ''At this level, going into these games, the mental skills are arguably the most important to have in place,'' he said one week before winning the Gold. It appears in the 21st Century, the mental aspects of the game are of paramount importance.
This revolution in Sports and the whole arena of Performance Enhancement began thirty years ago with the publication of ''Winning The Inner Game,'' by Timothy Gallwey. This important book was the first to show a definite connection between the mind's ability to focus and performance expectations. Gallwey described how every game is composed of two parts, the physical game and the mental game. The physical game is against an external opponent with external obstacles, while the mental game takes place inside the mind of the player. He pointed out that when a player is up against such obstacles as lapses in concentration, nervousness, self-doubt or self-condemnation, he's playing with a handicap that's difficult to overcome.
These many years later, most coaches and trainers now know that if an athlete doubts or fights himself or herself inside in anyway, even the best training will have its limitations. Currently, in fact, the respect for the influence of the mind has grown to the point where some managers now employ Psychologists to test prospective rookies to tell them who's most likely to be a team player and who's most likely to be a source of trouble.
This new industry has taken a quick foothold in professional Sports because it furthers the athletic goal of setting the pace of the game. Whether Tennis, Football or Golf, the goal is to set the pace and not play re-actively. In other words, to have the opponent play your game and not the other way around. A lack of confidence will distract from the focus needed to set the pace. Sports Psychology has had a great impact because it directly addresses the need for focus for insured success.
Many teams are aligned with the Sports Science Departments of major Universities in the cities they share because of the difference mental and motivational help is making. One issue concerning students, athletes, coaches and trainers is that of distraction. Whether its distraction by a nagging doubt, or a remark from the stands, distraction has caused more than a few players to lose their footing.
The culmination of this revolution in Sports is more profession teams budgeting more money in their athletic departments for mental training. Aside from group exercises like hand holding while walking on jagged rocks (to build trust among team-mates), most Coaches use relaxation and visualisation to build confidence within individual players. Clinically demonstrated many times, relaxation prepares the inner mind, the subconscious mind, to be reprogrammed.
For example, if a diver is having trouble making a certain dive, a trainer might suggest he relaxes and first see himself making that dive. The idea is that if the athlete can conceive it mentally, he or she can achieve it in reality. This principal, proven more than fifty years ago by Maxwell Maltz in his ground-breaking book ''Psycho-Cybernetics,'' has helped untold thousands improve their performance in many fields and professions.
As we turn the century, new developments in cybernetics and psychology are now creating a quiet revolution within this revolution. While relaxation and visualisation has been the staple of performance enhancement for years, a new technology has been developed that goes to the core of the subconscious mind. It is called the Metaphor Process and it is a process of asking questions that reveal the inner world of the subconscious mind. Locating the precise pictures in the subconscious that underlie persistent uncomfortable feelings, the Metaphor Process works by finding the images behind a thought or a feeling and changing the problem at its root.
For example, when an athlete has a feeling he experiences as performance anxiety, in his inner mind the pictures might be experienced internally as lightening striking in a heart, or a rope twisting in a stomach, or cloud fogging the mind. The questions asked in the Metaphor Process asks questions that bring these pictures to conscious awareness. Once identified, the inner images of a rope, or a cloud or lightening can find a way to change. When the inner pictures that underlie negative thoughts and feelings are changed, reactions automatically change, as well. Dissolving the images that cause uncomfortable feelings and negative thoughts, in turn, dissolves the wanted thoughts and feelings.
A diver who used to have to conjure up images of successful dives now has an opportunity, instead, of finding out what's keeping him from making the dive and getting rid of it. Whether the obstacle to peak performance is fear, or doubt, lack of concentration or nervousness, the athlete learns to see past his prior limiting images. Rather than relying on pictures introduced from an outside source, the athlete learns to depend on his or her own innate, automatic ability to respond.
Most athletes find that its easier to say that it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, but how you play the game, when they feel they've played their best. If the body is trained to perform at its best, if the mind is in agreement, the results should bring satisfaction. While the technique of superimposing images on the psyche has been a big benefit to all who've used it, athletes who've used the Metaphor Process have been finding it more advantageous to rely more on their own ability once the blocks to peak performance were removed. As the world changes in this new millennium, the changes it brings are more than many. It should be no surprise that the face of Sports is, even now, going through a transformation.
Which technologies prove to be more useful, remains to be seen. In the meantime, we can only guess that upper level sports managers are going to consider every option to provide premium mind training for their players. That's called protecting your investment and that's the one thing that won't change, in this millennium nor the next.
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