Performance Fears in Sport vs. Complacency

[The Gaffer]

Hi All,

I am very new to NLP, but have already seen the benefit it can have to other people. I say other people, since I personally find it very hard to visualise or imagine my feelings and experiences as if they are re occurring.

Basically, my questions are:

1) My football team have used the NLP techniques in order to remove the fear when playing the best side in our division. Basically, in the past we have always struggled or seized up when playing this particular side. We used Clown clothes and shoes to visualise how the other team look in our mind's eye. For that game it worked great, we went out and beat them because we were not afraid of them.

Since then we have played them again. The problem now, is that since we no longer fear them, we went out very complacent as if we were too ****y and just assummed we would win. This also seems to be a problem when we face teams at the bottom of the league.

What can we do to overcome this problem?

2) How can I imporve my own ability to visualise and re experience my feelings in the mind's eye?

[The Gaffer]

Apologies for the stars... I didnt realise that was a naughty word...

Replace with: Arrogant

[deep structure]

I have found that fear and excitement, or anticipation are often the same feeling. It is your body getting ready for action. The problem is that the feeling gets interpreted in a way that does not lead to a good sporting performance.
I once heard a good ambiguity for this.
If you call it fear it becomes an "emergency time" for the body.
If you call it excitement it can become an "Emerge-and-see time."
It is important to remember that fear is the bodies way of getting us ready, the fight or flight response.
But when you are aware that this feeling is linked to a game it can be framed as being excitement.
Many years ago I did a lot of Thai Boxing, this is a very brutal sport and only for the young to compete in. The amount of fight or flight that goes through you is incredible. But it is balnced out by knowing that you have trained well and are physically capable. When the first bell rings to signal the start of a fight that energy that was being used in emotions was quickly diverted to the contest.
The real difference between a champion and someone who is mediocre is knowing that you have the ability and that you can handle those feeling.

DS

[Alonso]

Do this process twice a day.

Close your eyes and think of an experience in your past which is very important to you. Something good that defines in a great way the kind of person that you are today. When you start seeing it, no matter how unclear you may feel that you're visualizing it, keep going back to the beginning of the memory trying to relive it in your mind's eye. Once you are doing so, I want to you to slowly but surely begin to shut down and shut off your awareness of the outside world, the sounds at that moment, the images running through your mind that deal with that moment in time, the feelings that you are experiencing as a result of being wherever it is in the world that you are in at that time. Do those two main things, like if they were meant to work in that way, like a car's accelerator and clutch. When you're beginning to move in your car you want gas, and you have to go through the clutch. When you want more gas or less gas you need the clutch sometimes. Well, picture as if you want a state of mind where you can get to visualize your life experiences, bringing back your life's memories. Say to yourself as you begin that you want to be able to bring back the memories of your life, piece by piece.

Do it twice a day.

Let me know if I can be of any more help in this.

[skip]

You just need to use your imagination a bit more.

I ussed NLP with my soccer teams, the moment they stepped over the touch line they felt, "I own you." and they felt a strong desire to put out their utmost by playing smart and hard, and a desire to uphold their part both for the team and their own pride.

This gave them the confidence I wanted them to have and still avoided the overconfident let down.

skip

[Merlin]

Hello,

Try a different idea.
Instead of clowns, create the idea:
'your ass is mine. I'm going to stomp you into the ground'

[Terry (existing)]

Perhaps I am not reading well, but it does seem that nobody has explained exactly what is taking place. Are we reffering to individual motivation, or team motivation, and is such being done by one person or by each individual? If by the later, how is each player trained to motivate themselves? Without such understanding, it is not possible to offer real help. I have a feeling from what I have read to date, that this is a matter of the blind leading the blind.....

[The Gaffer]

In my example, I (as the coach/manager) was leading a group of 14 players in a small huddle to use the clown technique.

From my words, they visualise the opposition in this way.

We used the same technique on Saturday to great effect. We drew 1-1 with the only side that had a 100% record in our league. To be honest we absolutely outplayed them and should have won. Their manager came to me at the end and said "How on earth we got a draw I'll never know, you destroyed us."

So here's the problem now... We managed to get rid of the fear of playing them, and we had the confidence to play superb against them, but we didnt quite have the killer instinct to finish them off when we were 1-0 up.

Any suggestions?

[Terry (existing)]

Don't want much do you Gaf? Hell man, we are miles away, and know nothing about you or your skills, or anything about how you train either, yet you expect us to know what you should do next (G).... Well, as a one time soccer player, it seems to me that training involved planning plays for OUR team, not trying to put down the other guys because you were scared of losing to them! Planning plays requires that each player knows what their part is in any play, so there is no time to visualize the OTHER guys even in clown suites.... Being the best you can be is the goal, not demeaning the other team because you think them better. Least that is how I would have played it myself, but then I do know what I can do, and I don't know what you are capable of so perhaps what you did was better, based on the skills or lack of, of each of your team members.....Congratulations on the win, but all you really did was help your team members relax, and that is good until they get too relaxed and forget that the other guys came to win also.

[The Gaffer]

Thanks for the insight Terry... I like your thinking.

The only real problem, is the Psychological thought process of children at 10 years old. Since they are not yet technically gifted enough to understand that their good preparation and planning will be good enough to see them through, they immediatly look to the past results of their opposition and anxiety and fears creep into their mind.

I understand why you may have seen it this way, but trsut me, the clown suits is not a way to put down the other team, indeed we have made great steps to ensure that this is not the effect. The aim is to remove their fear and anxiety of this team, so that they can concentrate on their own strengths and confidence.

Hence, when we played these teams, we played with purpose and confidence, but we were not complacent. The complacency comes in when the thought process allows a child to believe from the outset that the game will be easy. I am trying to find a way to tackle this issue. I want them to increase the importance of effort and determination to win, without increasing the importance of the other team.

Discuss

[Terry (existing)]

All teams practise to improve, and play better as a result. No team should be considered to be of such little importance that they will be "easy" to beat, and no game worth playing is of no importance. You are correct when you point out that you are taking care to not demean the other guys, and I am glad to hear it, but perhaps it might be better to suggest to YOUR players, that they are competing with themselves, not the other team. It is for them to be the best they can be, and to get better with each practise and each game. That way each gives of his best regardless of the reputation of the other team, and each improves with time as he should. Playing the team is an excellent way to get the best results, and make the most improvement in a player, so try one plan per game, not try to push too much at one time. On plan done well will show the value of teamwork.

[lanepierce]

Hi All:

I too had the pleasure of working with a soccer (football) team this past year. The Clayton State University Lakers won their divison and they were, unfortunately eliminated in the quarter-finals.

Utilizing NLP and hypnosis, I created a compounding suggestion that worked like this;
Establish the belief in champions on the team
"You can play and score against your team mates therefore you must be a champion too"
"Champions never underestimate their opponent"
"Everytime you look across the field you will see excellence in your opponent" (a little Jungian psychology, perception is projection)
"The more excellence you see in your opponent the greater your confidence"I think it worked out pretty good for the team. They really liked the pain control work. Footballers are notorious for knee injuries.

All the best

[Terry (existing)]

Pretty good Lane except for that last one (S) If you had left that out the team may have gone on the get the brass ring. If I might suggest from experience, never give a suggestion that makes no sense at the concious level, it will be detected and rejected... I would have suggested that knowing the quality of the other team members, made it a pleasure to compete against them, because there is no joy in winning against poor competition, but great satifaction in winning against quality. Much better Jungian suggestion (G)......

[TaffyE]

[quote=Terry (existing)] because there is no joy in winning against poor competition, quote]

And stand the chance of loosing to them?

[The Gaffer]

Hi again guys... I'm really glad this has brought up so many questions and new avenues to explore...

I have a few more questions relating to various posts in the thread...

Firstly to Terry - I like this idea of approaching every game as if you are competing with yourself in every game to be better. How might you enforce this idea so that players will always look to be better than themselves rather than being better than the other team?

Also, as a consequence of this approach... It is common knowledge throughout the world, that this biggest barrier to acheiving success is within our own Psychae (hence the entire need for NLP in the first place). How might you combat this problem, i.e since they are competing with themselves, thier mind getting in the way of performance and therefore restricting their ability to perform.

In addition, what happens when eventually, the players come up against players that are actually better than them. In this instance, (under normal conditions), players normally push themselves to be better than their opposition, thus raising thier game by a considerable amount. However, if they are competing with themselves, they may only require to raise their game by a small amount to be better than thier last performance, but this may not be enough to beat their opponents??? I hope that makes sense...

Secondly to Taffy - How might you approach and enforce the idea of being a champion to a group of players that have not yet experience such success? For example, this is their first season in a league. They are good enough to win it, but have a few anxiety issues which we are trying to overcome. They don't have the experience of winning a competition yet. What do you suggest in this case?

Thanks again all, I'm so pleased at how much response this is getting. It is great to see how other people approach performance in sport, and it is definately adding to my understanding of NLP...

[maverick]

Hi Gaffer,

You could try a simple NLP technique for your team called the circle of excellence, pick 3 states of mind that they would need to win the game, these can be whatever 3 states of mind yourself and your team agree on, confidence, focus etc.

You simply get each member to imagine a circle in front of them, each player will choose a colour for their own circle and inside this circle they're going to embody these 3 states of mind. You now get the players to imagine a time they were ultimately confident, get them to imagine and experience it as strongly as possible (make the picture bigger, brighter etc) and then step in to the circle, experience it stronger again and then leave the state of mind in the circle and step out, break the state by jumping up and down or similar.

Now do this again for the other 2 states, so you're finally left with 3 states of mind in the circle that create the unlimate mind set for winning the game.

If you get the players to imagine their circles are on the football pitch so the second they run on to the field they are stepping in to their circles and boom they're in the ultimate mind set to win the game.

As you say just taking away the fear of losing isn't really enough to get them in to the right state.

Good luck.

[The Gaffer]

Thanks for that Maverick... Sounds like a good technique.

Am I right in thinking that they need to imagine that their circle is the size of a football pitch? Or do they need to imagine that this circle is around their feet and they step inside it before a game?

If it is the former, can you have multiple circles? For example, we may need this technique to work for training and for various different shapes sizes of pitches? In this example would you just imagine the white lines, and therefore it could be any shape or size (watch them buzz as they walk across a road lol).

Finally, can you explain how you break them concentration on it, for instance, you mention jumping up and down... can you explain what eaxctly you mean? Thanks mate

[TaffyE]

[quote=The Gaffer]Secondly to Taffy - How might you approach and enforce the idea of being a champion to a group of players that have not yet experience such success? For example, this is their first season in a league. They are good enough to win it, but have a few anxiety issues which we are trying to overcome. They don't have the experience of winning a competition yet. What do you suggest in this case?quote]

What is the anxiety about, then deal with that. It may have to be for each individual, but dealt with in the team group. Celebrate small achievements and handle set backs in a positive way. "OK so we lost, and the (negative bits) can be sorted out with patience and the support of other team members, and we did ..... pretty well,

Perfect practice makes for perfect performance. As in the 7 P's of life - Proper Prior Planing Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

Instil the belief that they can expect to be at or near the top by mental imagery.

[maverick]

Hey Gaffer, their circle is as big or as small as they want it to be, but usually it's a circle just big enough for them to stand in, like a spot light for example, the circle will of course follow them as they move about the pitch the key is that they are inside their circle that embodies the desired states. Call this circle their 'circle of excellence'.

Regarding breaking state, lets imagine the first state they require is confidence, once they feel unlimately confident and embody that within their circle they now need to do the same again but with a different state, so it's important to break the first state before you move on, sudden movements, change of posture etc alter our state of mind. Imagine when you're depressed you may be slumped in a chair, when you're feeling good you may sit up straight with your head in the air. All the jumping is achieving is stopping the first state ready for the second, perhaps explain it to them 'Shake the state off'. Perhaps it's rather like putting a car in neutral before you start the engine?

[Terry (existing)]

Well, since I am one of the old guard who uses hypnosis alone including those parts which are now regarded as separate, and applicable to NLP, I may have a differing outlook, and as a grandfather, I may see the importance of making the kids better persons as against winning all the matches. Perception is after all everything, and if it were me doing what you are doing, my goal would be to ensure that the kids had fun at every game and every practise, this being the primary goal. Secondly, I would zero in on the feeling of enjoyment as they breathed deeply, and enjoyed their mastery of ball control as they ran. To me, when each player is enjoying to the full, and giving their all because it is fun, they are automatically giving of their best, and being their best. This of course is separate from the controlled use of play plans which I mentioned earlier. Such plans are not only game winners, but also encourage the boys in teamwork, a usefull skill later in life. Now done properly, this might result in one boy out of the fourteen becoming good enough to be proffesional, and that would be fine, but I would have much more joy out of knowing that the other thirteen had become better and happier young men from spending time with me. Yes I did for one season train a soccer team, but best of all, I was for very many years a scout and rover leader, hence my long goal outlook. I was especially reminded of this when I returned to the small Ontario town were I lived when I met my wife, and was confronted by a group of young men, smartly dressed, healthy looking, and asked,
""scouter, how come you didn't visit us last year when you were here"? I had last seen these boys scruffy, and sometimes not so clean, trudging into the bush for a weekend camp, or a days hike, and learning as they went about bush lore. Now I had a bunch of bright young University students, who obviously had grown into someone to be very proud of. Later, when visiting one of the parents, in company of another leader whom I had worked with, I was told that my efforts had been very much apreciated by him (the dad) as well. He had never expected much from his son, assuming he would end up working at the mill like dad, and thank God I had been there to show him a bigger goal he could reach. Those moments are rare, but what fun when they happen, it makes all the work worthwhile... I imagine you also have had such a moment, but if not, it is yet to come. Enjoy....

[Poodle]

I had a male client and his game was darts. I did not understand his game so he had to sit down and tell it all to me and what meant what, etc., etc. He had apparently been beaten by some females who loved to rub his nose in it which really is not a good thing for a guy and down the drain went his self-confidence! I induced trance, had him actually feel the dart in his hand (shape, weight, feel) and with total precision when throwing that dart he knew exactly where it was going to land just as Tiger Woods knows where a ball is going to land after he hits it. We mentally threw that dart over and over and over and over again until it was landing in the exact same place everytime that he wanted for a good hour or so. Emerged and told him to go home and throw a few and call me back. Every dart the man threw was exactly where he wanted it and as I understand it he is going to the championships somewhere according to his wife. Amazing what guided imagery can accomplish. I had also given him a post hypnotic suggestion to help the process along to mentally throw and see the dart hit exactly where he wanted it before actually physically releasing it. Some months later his wife called and said he wanted to know how long the suggestion would last. My reply was until the end of his life or until he didn't need it any more. If we can do guided imagery in one sport, why should it not work in others?