JV's blog

How well do you perform when your back is up against the wall or when you are playing an elimination game?

Some athletes perform better when there is a sense of urgency or perceived pressure. We often call these athletes clutch in those situations.

However, are all athletes who play better when their backs are against the wall clutch? How about an athlete who underperforms against a lower-ranked opponent but kicks it into gear late in the game to steal the victory? Is that athlete clutch?

For example, if a Top-10 tennis player competes against a player ranked No. 200, generally speaking, the player with the better ranking should be able to win handily. Let’s set the stage, the top-10 player loses the first set 6-0 and finds himself down 4-0 in the second set.

He is not necessarily being outplayed as underperforming due to a lack of effort and focus. Late in the second set, the Top-10 player kicks it into gear and wins the second set 6-4 and the third set 6-2 for the victory.

Is that player clutch because he won or just an athlete who overcame underperformance early in the competition?

Underperformance is caused by taking another opponent lightly or thinking you can magically flip a switch to turn the game around. If you wait to give your complete preparation, effort, and focus, often, it will be too late.

Underperformance can be avoided by adopting a champion mindset to every game or competition. A champion mindset approaches every competition with equal importance, whether you are competing against a top-ranked opponent or a person ranked 200th, a team with a winning record, or a winless team.

In their Stanley Cup playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Florida Panthers were down three games and facing elimination from the playoffs…

The Panthers underperformed throughout the series and lost Game 3, 5-1. Despite averaging a league-high 4.11 goals per game during the regular season, the Panthers have scored only three goals through three games in the second round of the playoffs.

Florida coach Andrew Brunette talked about the team’s underperformance throughout the playoff series.

BRUNETTE: “[The Lightning] have more will and more desire than we do. We’re a good team when (our) backs are against the wall, and it looks bleak. Hopefully, we can find some energy and some passion and some joy.”

Having the ability to perform is not enough to perform at your peak. To be on top of your game, you need to approach each game as a playoff game, a championship meet, or a high-level tournament.

Start by understanding what causes you to underperform in competition. Do you prepare differently depending upon the opponent? Do you feel more pressure to be perfect? Are you worried about disappointing others?

When you understand what leads to underperforming, you can take steps to improve…

Most of the time, athletes underperform due to fear of failure. That means you get too worried about outcomes and what others think about your performance.

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By Patrick Cohn

                                              Playing With More Confidence in Competition

What is stable confidence? What is fragile confidence? Is winning or performing well the best way to gain confidence?

If you consider winning as the only source of confidence, you will have fragile or “roller coaster confidence.”

Roller coaster confidence is when your belief depends on winning or performing well in the moment. In other words, after a win, you feel confident, and after a loss, your confidence drops.

With fragile confidence, you are not in control of your confidence. You are at the whim of outcomes.

Stable confidence results from years of training, preparing, and defining yourself by your strengths. Stable confidence is built through what have done and not what has happened.

In this mindset, your level of belief is within your direct control and remains steady despite outcomes.

Let’s look at a hypothetical of a basketball player who missed three open shots in a game and made two turnovers…

A player with roller coaster confidence will be less confident in the next game. On the other hand, a player with stable confidence will view the last game as an anomaly. He will realize bad games are a part of being an athlete.

He will continue to prepare at a high level and approach the next game as a new opportunity. He will stick to his game plan for the current game rather than bringing up memories of bad games.

Take, for example, the 2022 Boston Celtics. The Celtics were under .500 at the midpoint of their season. As Boston’s confidence improved, the team turned the season around and went 31-10 in the second half of the season to earn a playoff spot.

The Celtics faced the Brooklyn Nets in the first round of the playoffs. Many predicted the Nets to make a strong run for the championship due to having two of the most prolific scorers in the league.

However, the highly confident Celtics dominated the series and swept the Brooklyn Nets to advance to the second round.

Celtics guard Marcus Smart alluded to the team’s confidence and how the Celtics approach each game.

SMART: “It’s funny to us because we don’t duck and dodge anybody. We knew what we were going to come in here and do.”

The Celtics worked on building their confidence through practice and training throughout the year. The Celtics’ stable confidence was crucial for playing their game and winning in four straight games.

You can’t wait for confidence to happen. That is not how confidence works. Confidence is an action. So what steps are you going to take to grow your confidence?

List 10 reasons why you deserve to feel confident in your skills and have stable confidence. Remind yourself every day of the work you have put in over the last few years.

The next time you blow a play or make a mistake, remember that one mistake does not negate years of confidence-building!

If you want to fast track your confidence-building, contact us for one-on-one live mental performance coaching via video conference from anywhere in the world.

by Patrick Cohn

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                                      How to Control Your Emotions on the Field

Do you have difficulty controlling your emotions during a soccer game?

Have you ever become so angry after a bad play that you yelled at your teammates, coach or even the ref?

Some soccer players get so upset that they just want to walk off the field in the middle of the game.

Negative emotions, such as anger, are difficult for some soccer players to manage and those runaway emotions can have a snowball effect on the mistakes they make throughout a game.

By far, the most taxing emotion in soccer is anger. Anger wears on a soccer player mentally and physically.

Anger is emotionally draining and pulls your attention away from playing soccer to a world inside your head of negative thoughts, fueling your anger even further.

Surely you can relate to feeling physically exhausted after a soccer game when anger raged inside of you.

We are asked this question a lot: How do I not get angry after mistakes and control my emotions?

First of all, don’t feel as if you are the only athlete who has a hard time with anger while performing; it is quite common among athletes in varying degrees.

Several mistakes in a row or missed chances can build your level of frustration. Hitting an open shot off the crossbar can turn that frustration into full blown anger.

That anger can lead to giving up on focusing and lunging wildly at the ball with no goal in mind. As you continue to add poor decisions, you can feel the anger swell inside.

While it may feel impossible–in that moment–to control your anger, you definitely can. You may not be able to prevent mistakes, but you can learn mental strategies to prevent losing your cool and accumulating stupid fouls.

You may notice that when you become angry, you retreat into your mind and become overly-critical of every little mistake.

Not only are there mental ramifications, physical consequences also become a challenge. When your anger rages, your heart rate becomes elevated and your breathing becomes shallow and rapid.

Soccer players stop communicating with teammates or lash out. They take longer to react because the are dwelling on the past.

You can learn to manage your negative emotions. For example, learning to refocus can help turn your attention away from replaying bad moments in your mind and help you focus on making the right decision in front of you.

Another way to manage your anger is to use relaxation strategies to calm your body and thus your mind.

Either way, it is important to realize that you are, ultimately, in the driver’s seat and not your emotions.

Managing Anger in Check on the Field

Most often, when soccer players get upset, they are failing to play up to their expectations, such as “I shouldn’t make any mistakes” or “I should win all 1v1 situations.”

First, you have to manage your pregame expectations and not put standards on your game before the start of the game.

Second, what are the top 5 triggers that make you angry while playing. What makes each mistake so awful for you? Write the trigger and your reaction as well.

Next, how can you respond differently in each of the same situations? How can you stop dwelling on the mistake? You want to have a new reaction to the mistake that will help you play on with composure.

The key is to understand that mistakes do not make you angry! How you react to mistakes makes you angry!

Published on May 9 

By Patrick Cohn

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What causes choking? Why do some young athletes choke while other athletes rise to the occasion?

Most young athletes don’t like to hear the word “choking,” let alone admit that they choke. Yet, some athletes believe they “always choke” when the pressure is on.

Choking generally results from kids dealing with three issues.

The first is negative self-talk.  If kids tell themselves they will choke over and over or refer to themselves as chokers, they will likely choke when the pressure is on.

Self-talk is powerful. Think of self-talk as a directive. Kids’ self-talk tells them what to do, how to do it, and when to do it.

For example, a young athlete might say, “In the last minutes of a close basketball game (when to do it), I always choke (what to do) and shoot the ball short (how to do it).”

Athletes should send themselves a different message to yield different results. For example, they might tell themselves, “When my legs get tired, make sure I get my legs into the shot and follow-through.” During games, it’s ideal to shorten this message by using cue words such as legs and follow-through.

Second, kids’ perspective is critical. When they view pressure situations as an opportunity to fail or embarrass themselves, they will tense up and play it safe.

In the ninth inning of a tied baseball game, if they see themselves as “chokers,” they will try to avoid striking out instead of swinging the bat and making solid contact.

Young athletes are more successful when they see challenging situations as a chance to shine and help their teams.

A third issue that leads to choking relates to what kids focus on. Concentrating on results, the outcome of a gymnastics routine, missing a game-winning shot or losing a set in a tennis match all create anxiety. And anxiety negatively affects sports kids’ physiology and mechanics, causing them to choke.

Kids need to stay immersed in what they are doing to keep their attention on the moment, freeing their minds and bodies to just perform.

Choking or performing under pressure directly results from kids’ perspective, focus and self-messaging, all of which are under kids’ control. Be sure to remind sports kids that they have control of these three issues.

Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka talked about how his team needs to respond to adversity:

“It’s guys getting rattled when it’s not the end of the world. You still have a 12-point, comfortable lead, and you gotta end that run,” he said. “We have to understand time and score, and we need a solid shot and not just get caught up in the game.”

Blowing a big lead is often due to choking or playing it too safe. The fear of unraveling and losing after having a commanding lead causes athletes to play cautiously and on their heels, instead of on their toes.

The focus always needs to be on the present moment. Kids will underperform or choke when their minds drift away from the moment at hand.

One way for kids to prevent choking is to reframe how they view pressure games. For top athletes, pressure elevates their game when they use the added intensity to go deeper into the zone.

Help kids look at pressure as an opportunity to excel, not an opportunity to fail.

Under pressure, the game is the same with the same size court, rink, or field. The only thing that changes is young athletes’ perspective of the importance of the game!

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Published on

FEBRUARY 11, 2022 By Patrick Cohn 

A study by the Aspen Institute and Utah State University–commissioned by TeamSnap–revealed what parents want most from youth sports and kids’ ability to meet those goals.

Team Snap’s survey showed that parents, most of all, want kids to have fun, said Peter Frintzilas,  CEO of TeamSnap, a youth sports management app., in an interview with our Ultimate Sports Parent podcast.

Ninety-five percent of parents said they want their kids to have fun in sports, said the TeamSnap survey. Eighty-nine percent said mental health support is important and 88 percent said they want sports to enhance their kids’ physical health.

But parents’ goals haven’t been realized in the last two years, said Frintzilas. Only 54 percent of parents said their kids are still having fun. Only 52 percent said that participating in youth sports is having a positive impact on kids’ mental health. And 52 percent said they felt like their kids were performing at pre-pandemic levels, meaning they hadn’t improved.

Part of the reason for the dissatisfaction is the drop in opportunities to play sports. Many events have been canceled.  And restrictions have been hard on kids, said Frintzilas.

Of course, the drop in satisfaction, performance and mental health hurt kids’ confidence in sports, he said. But sports can help kids boost their confidence as sports returns to normal.

As parents look toward the spring season, they should focus first of all at ensuring their kids are having fun, said Frintzilas. Parents should actively participate in youth sports by watching games and helping the team, he said.

Parents should also focus on reducing the screen time that increased during the pandemic. In addition, they should encourage kids to get back in sports. More than 60 percent of parents said that decreased sports participation during the pandemic led to increased screen time.

A number of mental game strategies will also help kids whose confidence and performance were undermined by the pandemic.

Parents can ensure their young athletes’ expectations aren’t too high, because this can lead to frustration if they don’t meet their lofty expectations. In addition, help young athletes  replace negative self-talk– “I can’t” statements–with more positive self-talk, including “I can” statements.

What’s more, parents can ensure their young athletes plan well for games or performances. That means they need to eat well before performances and ensure they have proper equipment. 

And young athletes can put together a list of mini-goals they’d like to achieve during games or performances. These goals will help them focus on the moment, rather than on the score or win.

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Published on

MARCH 2, 2022 By Patrick Cohn