Last week at Woodward Camp I had the honor to meet Dr. Alison Arnold, PhD. She is a mental toughness coach for several Olympic teams in the US and Australia. She also runs her website on mental toughness training. She did a clinic that involved athletes' participation. She first handed out a string with a fishing weight tied on to the end. She asked everyone to hold the string with their index finger and thumb. The athlete had to relax and stay focus on how they wanted to move the weight on the other end without moving thier arm, wrist, and fingers.
The athletes was able to move it in small circles and large circles in either counter clock-wise and/or clock-wise movement. The participant were surprised how it ever happened. She explained how the brain send electrical signals by the nervous system that runs through the fine muscles in their fingers causing it to vibrate through the string making the weight move. The point of this experiment was that proves that the body respond by what you think.
She tells a story to the athletes about a grandfather who was telling his grandson about the 2 wolves that were constantly battling and butting heads. One wolf was a bad wolf. The bad wolf was always angry, uses negative reinforcement, depressed, and lacking self confidence. The second wolf was happy, using positive reinforcement, and self confidence was high. The grandson ask about which wolf won. It was obvious that the second wolf won. The athletes was then to ask to write down 5 feeling about gymnastics using the bad wolf thoughts then write 5 things about their gymnastics using the good wolf thoughts. She tells the athletes to read the bad thoughts and the good thoughts. They were asked of how they felt reading the bad thoughts, most responded that their body feel bad and lazy. When they ask how they felt reading the good thoughts, most responded that their body feel good and feel more confidence and powerful believing that they can conquer their fears to get over the bad thoughts of why they don't do the skill they hated most.
Having much thought about mental toughness, I like to use the movie Star Wars when Luke Skywalker was training to be a Jedi but had a few challenges along the way. Like his trainer, Yoda, he says to focus, feel the force, and let the force be with you and he can be a good Jedi. I see the force as a positive reinforcement. The force can be viewed to believe, positive reinforcement, increase self confidence, increase self esteem, and to conquer your fear. The force was also the use of mental imagery of yourself doing the skill. Darth Vader comes in and wanted to recruit Luke to be on the dark side. Darth Vader was angry and uses negative reinforcement thinking he would be best to take over the Empire. I see the dark side as a negative reinforcement that kills the self confidence, self esteem, and not believing in yourself to conquer your fear.
Luke is a powerful Jedi all because he was patient with his training, has positive attitude, never gave up hope, and his self-esteem grew stronger increasing his self-confidence to believe in himself. As of for me is was important to be patient when learning a new skill. Learning a new skill requires patient. At times I felt frustrated not be able to do the skill and takes me to the dark side of negativity and not believing in myself to conquer the skill. The more I battled myself to be on the positive side of thing by worry about making the bit and pieces of the skill better rather than the whole skill. I felt better thinking about it that way. My confidence grew stronger and knowing one day my time will come knowing that I finally won the battle to get that new skill. I also use the mental imagery of myself doing the skill. Not only I could see myself doing it, I could feel my body as if it was doing it. It was the greatest feeling in the world to have much appreciation of how much work I had to put into it regardless of the ups and downs I went through. I never gave up!
During training, we all have our darkside in us. It is our choice what we do with those dark side feelings. We can either fight the darkside or we quit. Luke Skywalker did once felt the darkside but he never gave up and fought through the darkside and use his power to feel the force. Like Yoda said "Do or do not, there's no try". Mistakes do happen and make you feel on the darkside at times. Remeber that mistakes are for learning not for quiting so fight the darkside.
We all need to have that mental toughness and fight the dark side and start feeling the force. So try writing 5 of your darkside feelings and then find ways to fight it and write the 5 force feelings. Once you have that, rewrite your goals of how you will achieve them.
Tip: Always look on the positive side of things regardless of the outcome. No matter how small or big the improvement is, it is always an improvement. You may not get win a medal but look at your score and realized you have beat your personal best score. Winning a medal should not be your goal becuase you can't control it. You only control what you can do to make improvement by beating your personal best score, learning a new skill, adding a new skill in your routine, and moving up a new level. Winning medals or not doesn't make you who you are. Your attitude toward yourself makes you who you are.
May the force be with you through out the season.
You can checkout Dr. Alison Arnold, PhD Mental toughness training website at www.HeadGamesWebCamp.com to learn to banish fear and doubt, remove mental blocks, and create an unshakeable mind.
"Remember this taste no matter how many times you go through it because when you finally get it you appreciate it more." - Ray Lewis, Baltimore Ravens.
Good Luck!
No comments:
Post a Comment