Self talk: Using positivity to trump fear

My column in the November issue of The Wingfoot Express, Greater Boston Track Club's regular newsletter, featured an article this month on the effective use of self talk in performances. Read on...

Self talk: Using positivity to trump fear

With Cross Country Nationals and the beginning of indoor track season upon us, GBTC athletes have a lot on our minds. For the cross country folks, months of training and racing will culminate in one final performance. For the track folks, the pulsating pressure of the indoor season awaits us. While we take measures to ensure we are constantly improving our physical fitness, we have a tendency to neglect the role of mental fitness in our performances. Today, we address this role.

We have all experienced the sense of dread that accompanies excitement prior to a race. The knowledge that we will be in severe pain and fatigue for the near future can be paralyzing; however, we have ways to counter these negative thoughts. Self- talk, an essential component of cognitive control, can either enhance or inhibit performance. Positive self talk can raise athletes’ self-esteem and encourage us to remain in the present rather than focus on past negative thoughts, feelings, or performances. Negative self-talk can cause us to engage in behavior that reaffirms our negative thoughts, thereby suggesting to us that our original negative thoughts are correct. While research suggests that peak performance usually occurs when athletes are not thinking about their performance, rather we are acting automatically, athletes often do think when we are performing and therefore require tools to change our negative thinking to positive thinking.

Running, a solitary and rather painful activity, provides many opportunities for athletes to engage in negative self-talk. Statements such as “I can’t do this,” “I’m tired,” “I just want to stop” run rampant through runners’ minds during performances. How do we change these thoughts?
By recognizing our negative thoughts and coupling those thoughts with thought stoppage techniques and positive thoughts, we can redirect our attention and, therefore, our behavior to enhance our performance. Negative thoughts can lead to negative feelings that can lead to negative behavior that can lead to poor performances. This pattern suggests the importance of eliminating negative thoughts by consistently using a thought stoppage trigger. We should use a trigger word that works for us. If you are having trouble coming up with a word, try the word “stop”.

As a negative thought enters your mind in training or racing, such as the inevitable common thought during the second mile of a cross country race, “I can’t do this - its too hard - I want to stop,” say out loud “stop.” After you tell yourself to stop, give yourself a short true positive statement to repeat to yourself. For example, after saying “stop,” say to yourself, “hang,” meaning that you know you can hang onto the runner in front of you, you’ve done it in the past, and you can use this knowledge to push through your negative thoughts. Make sure you have selected your thought stoppage trigger word and your short positive statement prior to training or competition, so you don’t have to think while you’re in distress, you can just act automatically.

Let me give you a personal example. In a cross country race two years ago, three minutes into the race, negative self-talk crept into my mind. I told myself “Stop. You always feel better after the first mile. Just make it to the first mile.” Once I crossed the 1-mile mark, I told myself to stay within 2 yards of the woman ahead who was wearing green. When my mind told me I was tired, I reminded myself “2 green, 2 green, 2 green.” This caused me to focus less on my negative thoughts and more on my competition. I pulled myself up to the woman in green and focused my energies on her while chanting the constructive phrase “2 green.” I then beat her by over a minute. As someone who tends to underperform in cross country races, if I can use thought stoppage and positive reframing to enhance my performance, so can all of you.

Coaches Clinic Presentation

Thank you to those supporters who attended my presentation today on the effectiveness of a youth development model with a Boston Public School. If you missed today's presentation, you are a coach, or you are just looking to develop your sport psychology knowledge base, consider coming to Ramsey Rehab's first coaches clinic this Saturday in Leominster. I will be presenting on how coaches can use communication to motivate their athletes in a healthy and effective way. Other professionals in the medical and athletic community will be discussing a variety of topics, including concussion management, proper nutrition, dynamic pre-game warm up programs, and basic strength training for adolescents.

WIP Presentation

I will present my up-to-date research findings on how physical activity can foster the socio-emotional development of urban youth on Wednesday, October 14th from 12:30-2 pm at Boston University's School of Education. If you are a member of the BU SED community, check out the presentation. You're in for a treat!

BDO Junior World Cup

I spent the last month in a flurry of excitement, serving as the ambassador to Germany for the BDO Junior World Cup Field Hockey Tournament, housed at Boston University, Harvard University, and Boston College. The tournament featured the best Junior Field Hockey teams from around the world in a remarkable display of athleticism, sports-person-ship, and competition. While watching the tournament, I couldn’t help but wonder how challenging it would be to compete in a foreign country for 2 weeks, especially if the language spoken differed from athletes’ native languages. Not only must athletes compete against strong opponents, they must navigate a new city, be aware of cultural differences, and adjust their training, sleeping, and eating schedules to fit with their competition schedules in a different country. While many teams traveled with sport psychologists, some teams were left to cope with mental stressors in the confines of their own heads or the dorm rooms they shared with their teammates.

Typically, the more significant the event, the more pronounced mental stress is for athletes. Often, the symptoms of such stress rear their ugly heads when athletes perceive situational demands to exceed their personal resources at any given time. Such stress can be managed through setting realistic expectations, visualization or imagery, positive self talk, and a variety of other techniques provided generously by the field of sport psychology.

WEBSITE LAUNCHED

For information on individual or team services, check out Hayden Performance Consulting. Please contact Laura Hayden via the CONTACT page with any comments or questions. I look forward to helping many of you strive for performance excellence in your chosen sport!

Special thanks and recognition go to Kyle MacQueen for website design and development, Emily Raymond for website pictures (swimming and soccer pictures), Theresa Redmond for logo design, Jen Lee & Mark Tuttle for website consultation, Debi Roder for business consultation, and Brad Kozel for infinite patience.

The Mental Side of Overreaching

We all know what overtraining means. Even the most intelligent athletes can fall victim to this sexy and alluring concept. You know who you are – perhaps you’ve earned the nickname “Workout Queen”, you’ve frequently run 100 mile weeks just because you want to hit the triple digits, or you’ve hit the pool 4 times a day just because you have some extra free time. 

Well, overreaching might be a tempting concept to you “enthusiastic” athletes. While there are a variety of definitions for overreaching in endurance sports, the one I like is from Matt Fitzgerald, a contributor to the magazine Triathlete. In the March 2009 issue, in his article titled “When Too Much Is Just Enough”, Fitzgerald defines overreaching as “when you are training hard enough so that, after seven to 10 days, your performance begins to decline due to accumulating fatigue. But the art of overreaching lies in cutting back your training as soon as you reach that threshold of performance decline in order to give your body a chance to adapt to all of that hard work.”

As I read this article, I began thinking about the physical and mental art of overreaching. Physically, if you know your body reasonable well (as most athletes do), you can find that delicate balance between reason and insanity and ride it pretty well until its time to cut back your training. Mentally, however, you face a different monster. You’re asking yourself to make peace with an unbelievable amount of physical exhaustion, perhaps entering into a training chaos mentality, and then expecting yourself to adjust immediately, without hesitation, as soon as you think you’ve reached that nasty threshold.

How do you make that transition from chaos to calm?

Keep in mind your ultimate performance goal. Allow that goal to guide your reasoning. When it is time to cut back from an intense training load, be aware that your body will likely respond favorably, but your mind might have tasted the cruel and delicious taste of fatigue and want more. We endurance athletes know this taste and often hunger for it. By keeping in mind your ultimate performance goal, you’re more likely to enjoy your slightly more relaxed training schedule and appreciate the physical and mental benefits of shifting your training. Remember, while we certainly want to enjoy or athletic journey, we still want to perform to our potential in competition. Try to avoid sabotaging that goal by becoming so addicted to the “training hard” component of your training that you fail to enjoy the easier and more relaxed side.

Get SMART

The official Greater Boston Track Club newsletter, the Wingfoot Express, highlights club members' performances, provides nutritional and training advice, and updates club members of upcoming events. The Wingfoot Express features a regular column by HPC's Laura Hayden, called The Other 90%, focused on sport psychology, mental preparation and peak performance. Below is this issue's article.

We all know that old adage ―sport performance is 10% physical, 90% mental, but have we really thought about the implications of such a statement? I don’t know the actual ratio of physical to mental preparation for peak performance. I’m sure the ratio is different depending on your sport, genetics, disposition, and style of competition. What I do know is the power the mind has over performance, regardless of who you are and what you do.

You’ve covered hundreds of miles, clocked repeated intervals, and spent many early mornings in the weight room. Your feet are blistered, quads are stacked, and time is drawing near. Whether you’re training for the next Grand Prix event, the upcoming cross country season, or Indoor Track, chances are you’re experiencing a bundle of feelings: excitement, nervousness, anxiety. Regardless of your event, you all know that feeling when you think about performing – palms begin to sweat and heart rate accelerates like my husband’s did when Kara Goucher flew past at mile 24 of the Boston Marathon.

If we know we’re prepared, why are we so nervous? We spend so much time physically training for an event and so little time mentally training for an event that the realization we might underperform hits us as we anticipate performing to the standard we set for ourselves. This realization is scary – we haven’t prepared for such a thought. Here, you’ll find one very simple way to minimize these thoughts and set yourself up for success.

The concept of goal setting is familiar to us as competitors. But this simple act, when done deliberately, can radically alter both our control over our performances and how we feel about our performances.

One approach to goal setting is setting SMART goals - clearly, we hope we are always setting goals that are smart, but this definition is not what I mean. I mean goals that are specific, measurable, adjustable, realistic, and time sensitive.

Rather than hold yourself to lofty, uninformed standards, set 2 types of SMART goals that realistically represent your current fitness and ability level:

1. Process Goals. Used to identify what part of your performance you’d like to focus on during practice or competition and what steps you must take to focus on your identified goal.

One non-SMART process goal might be, "I’m going to focus on lifting my knees when racing." As a SMART process goal, that statement will look a little different: "I’m going to focus on lifting my knees for the last 100 yards of the 400 at Club Nationals but, if I’m tired, I’ll drop down to 75 yards of high knees. I know this is possible because I tried it in practice." You’ll notice the goal is specific, measurable (last 100 yards), adjustable (allows for modification if tired), realistic (you’ve practiced high knees), and time sensitive (at Club Nationals).

2. Outcome Goals. Used to identify an end goal. We athletes are quick to choose outcome goals.

One non-SMART outcome goal might be "I’m going to break 5 minutes in the mile." While this goal is better than "I’m going to run really fast today", its not good enough to produce tangible results that accurately reflect our ability levels and allow for game-day circumstances to rear their ugly heads. As a SMART outcome goal, the above goal might look like this: "Since I’ve run 5:04, I’m going to try to break 5 minutes in the mile at Club Nationals if all the conditions come together for me but I’m going to reassess during the race and allow myself to speed up or slow down by 2-5 second at the 1k mark if I feel particularly good or bad." You’ll notice the goal is specific, measurable (5 minutes), adjustable (builds in 2-5 seconds of variation), realistic (you’ve run close to this time in the past), and time sensitive (at Club Nationals).

Why set SMART goals? By setting SMART process goals, you’ll find yourself focusing on process throughout your competition, which is often an overlooked part of competing. Runners often try to zone out to pass the time when racing, hoping that the race will unfold without too much drama until the last 50 meters. Focusing on process centers your mind on the task at hand, the present goal, and allows you to make adjustments to your technique during performance. Setting SMART outcome goals allows you to feel you have control over your performance. By setting goals that are specific to you, you place less emphasis on your competitors’ performances and more emphasis on your own abilities. You build into your
performance the possibility of needing to readjust your expectations and, therefore, reduce the disappointment you experience if your race doesn’t unfold according to plan (which is often the case).

This very simple step can help you jump to success, hurl into the winner’s circle, get on the right track, or perhaps, expedite the road to recovery. Allow your mental strength to guide your physical strength as you reach toward peak performance. In the words of Victor Hugo, "People do not lack strength, they lack will."

David Proctor's Most Important Lesson

"Track is an individual sport, and it requires you to know yourself and your body well. I was anorexic during freshman and sophomore years because I thought I'd put on too much weight to be fast. I remember the day I made the connection in my head that what I was doing was actually hurting me. Restrictive eating caused my underperformance and injuries. I learned the small things that help my body: hydration, nutrition, and psychology" (David Proctor, Bostonia Summer '09).

Sport is supposed to enhance our lives, yet the very pursuit of sport can lead to destructive behavior. David Proctor, Boston University alum sub-4 minute miler, reminds us of the serious issues that come to light when we look at our performances within our particular sport. Through honest reflection on our performances, we can identify destructive behaviors and work toward improving our performances, much like David Proctor did when he completed his senior year running a 3:59.14 mile. One of HPC's goals is to help clients through this complicated and reflective process toward performance enhancement.

Student-Athlete Led Drug Tests: Empowering or Demeaning?

A new program has been instituted in Arlington High School (Arlington, MA) called “Let Me Prove It”. The program requires student-athletes to solicit peers to take at home drug tests to prove their drug-free lifestyle. Arlington High School has recruited 5 ambassadors to take the drug tests, share the results with their parents or guardians, sign a certificate stating they are drug free, and encourage their peers to take drug tests. Ambassadors who encourage the most peers to take drug tests are eligible to receive college scholarships, provided by First Check Diagnostics, the company providing these drug tests. Responses to “Let Me Prove It” have spanned from wholehearted support to a willingness to try to outrage. Supporters suggest the program addresses drug use from a positive standpoint, which is in contrast to many previous attempts to address drug use. People against these drug tests view the tests as gimmicks intended to promote First Check Diagnostics rather than promote healthy living. Between the two extreme views lies the “lets try it” approach that suggests the importance of trying different tactics to address drug use and the failure of past tactics to successfully elicit behavior change from students.

If the pilot program is successful, several school districts are targeted for implementing this program over the next year: Malden, Burlington, Somerville, Waltham, and Watertown. My initial response is interest over the selection process for school districts. Why are these schools targeted? Does the company have evidence to suggest these schools are the most at-risk for drug use? Are these schools expressing interest in the program?

In the era of youth development programs, the emphasis of such programs is on creating positive teacher-student relationships, developing strengths, and empowering youth. While I support creatively finding programs to address persistent issues, I wonder about the message this program carries to the students. I certainly hope a comprehensive evaluation is conducted during and following the pilot study to ensure that program leaders are acting ethically and responsibly, and, as sport psychologists say, doing no harm.

HPC presents at conferences

HPC traveled to Springfield, MA, last week to attend and present at two conferences. The first conference, lead by Dr. Don Hellison (University of Illinois-Chicago), discussed the implementation and evaluation of Hellison's Taking Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) model, a model used to teach youth personal and social responsibility through physical activity. Since I am using the TPSR model in my dissertation, I presented to the conference the initial findings of my dissertation, using this model with underserved adolescents.

The second conference, the Conference on Counseling Athletes, focused on creating leadership opportunities through sport. I, along with 4 Boston University colleagues, led a workshop centered on our process of collaboration when designing a leadership workshop series for 200 middle school students in New Hampshire earlier this year.

The above picture features past and present Boston University graduate students and professors (far right: HPC owner Laura Hayden).

Athletes should understand their lives to understand their performances

Why are so many professional baseball hitters underperforming this season?

Cafardo published “Stumped by their stumps” in the Boston Globe on June 21st, 2009, an article acknowledging the frustration of baseball athletes, coaches, managers, and team owners at the poor seasons of many top baseball athletes this year. The article highlights a few theories thrown at this concern – from the need for athletes to learn more about opponents’ weaknesses to the natural decline associated with age. One theory is simply that athletes are experiencing down seasons for no apparent reason.

Lets look at this from a different angle.

What about the mental stressors that can affect performance? What about the effects of the current athletic climate in the US? Athletes have received negative attention in recent media surrounding use of performance enhancing drugs and other ergogenic aids. Perhaps these stressors are taking their toll on athletes’ performances.

At least acknowledging the possibility of mental barriers preventing optimal performance allows athletes, coaches, managers and owners to be open to sport psychology interventions. For example, Springer identifies potential mental barriers to performance in “Some think slump is all in Ortiz's head” in the Boston Globe on June 7th, 2009. Springer suggests that Ortiz is experiencing, what we call in the biz, a performance block that prevents him from executing what and how he knows how to execute at the plate. One technique Ortiz has tried to resume his typical power hitting is to tap his bat against his left shoulder, providing a rhythm and routine to narrow his focus on his performance task. This behavioral technique is exactly the type of technique athletes often feel comfortable executing because it is concrete and repetitive. Often, however, behavioral or cognitive techniques are not enough to improve athletes’ performances without additional treatment.

I align with other sport psychologists who acknowledge the importance of understanding the context of athletes’ lives, not just the context of athletes’ sport reality. As I mentioned earlier, often non-sport related concerns interfere with sport performances.

What can we learn from these articles?

If your own athletic performance is on a decline or is inconsistent, rather than adding extra training, new techniques, more stretching, or new weight lifting programs into your routine, take an honest assessment of your current climate. Are you stressed at work? Are you experiencing relationship difficulties? Are you emotionally tired from family demands? What are the prominent factors in your life that may influence your performance? What changes has your life undergone since your performances began to decline? Odds are your performances are spotty due to outside factors, rather than sport specific factors. Once you address your performances as a result of all your life’s stressors and consequences, you can begin to understand why you are performing poorly or inconsistently and make changes in your life specific to your own needs.

Inequalities in Athletic Participation

Thomas’s article “Left Behind: A City Team’s Struggle Shows Disparity in Girls’ Sports” hit the Sports section of the New York Times on June 14, 2009. The article not only highlights the inequalities facing underserved female youth versus male youth, it recognizes the differences between female youth sport experiences in urban schools versus suburban schools. According to Thomas, female participation in sport has increased since the passage of Title IX (renamed in 2002 to the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act) in 1972, growing from 7% of all participants in 1971-72 to 41% of all participants in 2006-2007; however, in suburban schools, the amount of female and male “moderately involved” athletes is approximately equal, while in urban schools, about 36% of females and 56% of males identify as “moderately involved” athletes.

One speculation for the lack of female involvement in sport in urban schools is that female youth are expected to engage in “household” duties. There are more reasons, however, hidden in the creases of society, dissuading or preventing these females from participating in sport. As an adviser of a co-ed youth development program in an urban high school this past year, I noticed the glaring absence of female student-athletes in the program compared with male student-athletes. The program is a mandatory part of the school day for student-athletes. Now, there are 2 concerns here. The first concern is that there are significantly less female than male student-athletes at this school. The second concern is that only a small fraction of the female student-athlete population actually show up for the mandatory youth development program. Where are they? Is it the case that the program, identified as an athletic program, is so unappealing to female student-athletes that the females skip class? Are the female student-athletes fearful of sweating in the program and smelling throughout the rest of the school day? Are they reluctant to participate in physical activity around male student-athletes? What’s holding them back?

Thomas’s article explains that physical education has only recently (in 2004) emerged as a priority at public schools. While the increase in attention to physical education certainly reflects progress over recent years, it appears to have emerged as a response to the health crisis facing America, rather than as a genuine interest in and acknowledged value of physical health and wellness. In 2003-2004, more than 1 in 6 adolescents (age 12-19) were overweight, tripling the amount of overweight adolescents in the late 1970s, according to the Child Trends Databank. It appears that the physical education movement has come too late to serve many of our youth; however, increasingly more organizations are hopping on the wagon, creating and delivering comprehensive health and wellness programs to American youth. When I worked as a school counselor, I was the onsite manager of a project called TEAM Nutrition, a program designed to provide nutrition education to public school students. While this program, and others with similar missions, can certainly succeed in the school systems, the most effective and sustainable way to effect change is to completely integrate health and wellness initiatives into the schools themselves to create a ‘way of living’ that evidences a healthy approach to self awareness and self care. Not only should schools ‘live’ a healthy lifestyle by integrating health and wellness into all disciplines, serving healthy snacks and meals at lunch, and providing structure within the day for required movement, schools should, of course, offer outreach to families and the community to educate on and support healthy living for all members of the community. Many schools are making great strides in supporting health and wellness, but we can never do enough.

So, HPC encourages all readers to reflect on not only why these disparities occur between males & females and urban & suburban youth, but also how we can effect change across all contexts, from the school to the home to the community?

Logo Design by For the Muse

The incredible logo design to the left is the work of Theresa Redmond, whose art work can be found on her blog For the Muse.

I explained HPC's philosophy to Theresa, owner of For the Muse:
Hayden performance consulting (HPC) is dedicated to developing and maintaining optimal athletic performance through facilitating the development of cognitive skills, techniques, perspectives, and processes. HPC incorporates into its practice Arete, the ancient Greek’s notion of striving for excellence with courage and strength. HPC’s goal is to help performers strive for excellence in their chosen craft.

From this philosophy, Theresa took the idea of pursuing excellence and "developed it further to include the ideas of 'reaching goals' and 'striving for unity of mind and body'". From here, the ring concept emerged as a symbol of growth and completeness.

Hayden Performance Consulting (HPC)

HPC is a consulting company designed to help athletes and other performers reach their potential in their given craft through positive mental strength training. HPC offers individual and team sessions, team workshop, and lectures specifically geared to clients' needs. For additional information about HPC, expect the arrival of a HPC website in the near future. The blog is a site to share sport psychology material, update readers on the trends within the field, and answer questions and comments by readers. Enjoy and stay positive!