Index

1. Sports psychology: Mental toughness: Do you have what it takes to maintain focus, motivation and selfbelief when the going gets hard? - Lee Crust 2. Sports coaching: Jaccuse! A noted coaching guru launches a broadside at outmoded thinking and models John Whitmore 3. Thought Suppression: A Paradoxical Effect - Lee Crust 4. Sports Psychology: Thought Control - Lee Crust 5. Encouragement: How It Boosts Performance 6. Mental strength: When you can manage your emotions, you can perform at your best - George Karseras 7. Sports Psychology: Why 'good enough' is actually better than perfect (and a lot more fun, too) 8. Mental Strength: To improve your performance, you have to start by fortifying your mind - Frank Horwill 9. Visual Training Programmes for Sport: Why they don't work - Isabel Walker 10. Winning: The relevant question is not "Did you win?" but "Did you come up to your expectations?" Bruce Tulloh 11. The Majestic Self-confidence of Jonny Wilkinson: How expectations can make or break your performance - Lee Crust 12. Goal Setting: One step at a time How to raise your game through effective goal-setting - Lee Crust

1. Sports psychology:
Mental toughness: Do you have what it takes to maintain focus, motivation and self-belief when the going gets hard? - Lee Crust
There are certain moments during competition that appear to carry great psychological significance, when the momentum starts to shift in one direction or another. These situations require athletes to remain completely focused and calm in the face of difficult circumstances. Tennis players talk of the big points during a tight match, such as a fleeting chance to break serve; for an athlete, it could be the final triple-jump in the competition after seriously under-performing; for a footballer, it could be how you react to a perceived bad refereeing decision or to going behind in a match your team are expected to win. Think about times when things have not gone quite to plan and how you reacted. The journey towards peak performance is rarely a perfectly smooth road and we learn from our mistakes or should do. Do setbacks shake your self-belief and lower your motivation or act as a catalyst for even greater effort? Even great athletes and teams suffer setbacks. Olympic athlete Steve Backley is a prime example. In his book The Winning Mind, Backley cites his psychological strengths and, at times, his weaknesses as major determinants of whether he performed near to or below his own strict targets in competition. He talks of the transition from young up-and-coming javelin thrower to major international competitor when, after experiencing success so often as a junior, he found himself under-prepared for the mental hurdles and barriers created by higher-level competition. Backley says psychological strategies were the key to helping him to deal with this competitive stress. Most top athletes and coaches believe that psychological factors play as crucial a role as physical attributes and learned skills in the make-up of champions. When physical skills are evenly matched as they tend to be in competitive sport the competitor with greater control over his or her mind will usually emerge as the victor. Mental strength is not going to compensate for lack of skill, but in close contests it can make the difference between winning and losing. A key question for sport and exercise psychologists is whether champions have simply inherited the dominant psychological traits necessary for success or whether mental toughness can be acquired through training and experience. Recent research has attempted to explore the concept of mental toughness in sport more thoroughly, and it appears that, while some people are naturally more tough-minded than others, people can be toughened-up with the correct approach to training. What do we mean by mental toughness? It is probably easiest to define in terms of how it affects behaviour and performance. A mentally tough athlete is likely to: 1. achieve relatively consistent performances regardless of situational factors; 2. retain a confident, positive, optimistic outlook, even when things are not going well, and not choke under pressure; 3. deal with distractions without letting them interfere with optimal focus; 4. tolerate pain and discomfort; 5. remain persistent when the going gets tough; 6. have the resilience to bounce back from disappointments.

The influence of personality

These characteristics are obviously related to success in most life situations. But it seems that some of us may be tougher than others because of personality traits and learned ways of coping. Personality research has always stirred up controversy usually because researchers have not been able to agree on the correct approach to studying it. Some have taken what is known as the trait approach, which views personality as stable and enduring, based on individual characteristics. However, others see personality as shaped by environmental influences, while interactionists view individual traits and the environment as codeterminants of behaviour. In recent times, this latter position has tended to predominate, based on the view that personality structure involves both a stable core of attitudes, values and beliefs about self, that remains relatively unchanged after early childhood, and more changeable, dynamic behaviours that are influenced by our environment. Research on the relationship between stress and illness has revealed that some people have characteristics that act as buffers against stressors, making them less likely to succumb to ill health in difficult times. The leading researcher Suzanne Kobasa showed in one study that a personality characteristic known as hardiness was a key factor in whether or not highly-stressed executives succumbed to illness. The hardy executives, who avoided illness, tended to perceive stressors as challenges rather than threats, so maintaining a sense of control over events. Kobasa suggested that hardiness incorporates three key elements: 1. Control the perceived ability of the individual to exert influence rather than experience helplessness; 2. Commitment ie a refusal to give up easily; 3. Challenge involving a persons ability to grow and develop rather than remain static, and to view change rather than stability as the norm. Until recently, few studies had attempted to transfer the concept of hardiness to sport and exercise settings, but it seems very similar to the idea of mental toughness outlined earlier in this article. One study on the relationship between hardiness and

performance in basketball showed that seven out of eight season-long performance indicators were significantly correlated with a total hardiness score. This finding needs to be interpreted with caution, however, since correlations do not necessarily reflect causation. More recently, a team of researchers at Hull University have taken the idea of hardiness a step further by proposing a model of mental toughness in sport. A key development has been the development of a questionnaire to assess mental toughness that can be used to assess its influence in experimental studies. The Hull researchers carried out two studies to show how mental toughness was related to performance and cognitive appraisal. In the first study, 23 volunteers performed 30-minute static cycling trials at three different intensities of 30, 50 and 70% of their maximum oxygen uptake, rating the physical demands of the trials at five-minute intervals. Participants were classified as having either high or low mental toughness based on their responses to the above-mentioned questionnaire and, as predicted, those with higher levels of mental toughness reported significantly lower perceived exertion at 70% of maximum. No significant differences were noted at lower levels of exertion which, as the researchers acknowledged, is consistent with the clich that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. The observed differences at higher levels of exertion could reflect a tendency of the more tough-minded to somehow act on the incoming stimuli before it reaches the level of perception, to reduce the perception of strain. Mentally tough exercisers might perceive themselves as having greater control during such conditions, or interpret the higher intensity as a challenge rather than a threat. The second study, on 79 participants, considered the influence of mental toughness on resilience in adverse situations. Participants were given either positive or negative feedback after completing a variety of motor tasks, and then asked to perform a planning task which was used as the objective performance measure. The key question for the researchers was how participants would respond to feedback that could alter their confidence. As predicted, mentally tough participants performed better on the planning task, delivering relatively consistent performances whether their feedback had been negative or positive. However, those with lower levels of mental toughness performed significantly worse after negative feedback, confirming the greater resilience of those with high levels of mental toughness.

The 4Cs model of mental toughness

Building on the work of Kobasa, the Hull team proposed that confidence (as well as control, commitment and challenge) was a key element of mental toughness. This has given rise to the 4Cs model of mental toughness. Research on mental toughness in sport and exercise has focused largely on individual differences, in which mental toughness is viewed as a relatively stable characteristic. However, classic previous research on animals has suggested that toughening up can be achieved through exposure to stressful conditions. Weiss and colleagues observed a toughening phenomenon after exposing animals to cold-water swimming, electric shock treatment or injections over a 14-day period. Specifically, the usual decrement in performance following aversive stimulation was not observed after the 14-day period. The intermittent exposure to aversive stimuli had apparently led to the animals becoming more tolerant of and resilient to such stimuli. Although this finding does not necessarily transfer to human subjects, there are distinct parallels with various techniques commonly used as interventions in sport and exercise environments. For example, a technique known as stress inoculation training gradually exposes the individual to more threatening situations while self-control is acquired as a means to combat learned helplessness. The stress response is gradually diminished as exposure renders the situation less threatening and the individual experiences a growing sense of control. Of particular importance here is the idea that exposure to stress in controlled situations is much more powerful than stress reduction or removal, which will not help an individual cope with future exposure to the same stressor. One researcher has proposed four major influences on toughening, as follows: 1. Early life experiences. Both human and animal studies have shown links between exposure to stressors in early life and reduced fear or emotionality when exposed to threats in adulthood; 2. Passive toughening. Intermittent exposure seems to protect against depletion of stress hormones and is linked with their quicker returns to baseline levels. In other words, people become less sensitive and more tolerant of stress; 3. Active toughening. Physical fitness gained through aerobic conditioning is thought to be an important means of selftoughening. This could be related to the application of control; 4. Ageing. This has the opposite effects to the other three, tending to make people more sensitive to and less tolerant of stress. Clearly, active and passive toughening are the most relevant manipulations for athletes and can be applied in a number of practical ways. Stress inoculation training is an obvious application, but this is probably best approached with the aid of a sport psychologist. Since I am a sport psychologist, I will give some examples of how mental over-load may be applied to training sessions in order to achieve some degree of toughening.

Rod Laver, the Australian tennis legend, has described how he used practice sessions to simulate tough match conditions. Laver felt that fatigue placed great strain on the concentration which was crucial to success in long matches. To simulate these conditions, Laver forced himself to concentrate and work even harder during the latter stages of training sessions, when he was tired, so that he became used to the mental strain of such conditions. He has cited this as one of the key factors in his long-lasting success. Simulation training is a great way to prepare mentally for the challenges of competition, and this can include mental as well as physical stressors. For example, a tennis player could increase the mental pressures in a practice match by starting each service game 0-15 down, and thus getting used to rebounding after losing the first point. Alternatively a player with an over-reliance on his first serve could be restricted to one serve only and be forced to become extremely focused and accurate with what is, in effect, a second serve. To enhance the stress still further, players could practise by playing tiebreakers, or play practice matches in front of an audience. The coach might use bad line calls or spectator noise as a way of exposing players intermittently to distractions and giving them practice at dealing with them. Tennis is a game with plenty of breaks between play that allow time for dwelling on past events or self-doubting. Using imagery and positive self-talk during dead time in order to remain calm and in control can be an effective strategy. Mentally tough competitors are likely to use strategies that reinforce their self-belief at times of crisis. And these strategies can be rehearsed in practice situations. With a little invention, simulation training can be used for most athletes, and the opportunity to deal with mental stressors in controlled situations can be an invaluable way to toughen up in preparation for the very real challenges of competition.

2. Sports coaching:
Jaccuse! A noted coaching guru launches a broadside at outmoded thinking and models - John Whitmore
Sports coaching has for too long been based on the dominance of a reductionist approach the insistence on analysing everything down to its basic components and lines of authority between coaches in the know and those supposedly without knowledge. This approach goes hand in hand with the denial of the innate, the instinctual and the intuitive, and it has held back sports coaching in UK and elsewhere by 25 years. That is a large claim and a strong accusation to level at the sports establishment, but I will lay out the charge in this article and invite you in the process to question long-held beliefs, think for yourself, engage your emotions and make your own decision. In so doing, you will be putting into practice the very elements of good coaching that I contend are so undervalued and underused. The beliefs and assumptions that coaches grow up with are the very ones that undermine learning, performance and enjoyment. They can be illustrated by the following statements: A person cannot learn a new skill without being told and/or shown by an expert. If you try to learn something without expert help, you will develop bad habits. Errors and bad habits can only be recognised and corrected by an expert. There is a right technique for most activities, one that has to be taught. Intellectual understanding is a pre-requisite of learning good technique.

Coaches must be experts in the particular sport or activity that they coach. Of course, these are unlikely to be stated as absolutes in a debate, but it is in this absolute form that they underpin the position that the vast majority of coaches adopt, consciously or unconsciously. Though tempted by my emotions to scream that they are all wrong, to do so would be simply to fall into the authoritarian trap that I am challenging, so I will express it differently. It is my view that retaining such beliefs severely restricts our ability to be effective coaches. It follows, therefore, that most coaches and that includes many who are renowned for their expertise and achievements - are not nearly as effective as they could be. Nor are they as effective as they think they are, for they only have for comparison the results of other coaches practising along similar lines. Alternative approaches are not on their radar screens.

Coach education programmes need radical review

I believe that the fundamental psycho-physical basis of coaching as practised in sport is flawed and needs to be challenged. I have no doubt that most coaches do the very best they can with the training they have: it is the governing bodies of individual sports and their coach education programmes that need radical review. The role and influence of the National Coaching Foundation, for example, has been disappointing because of its lack of understanding of the bigger picture. Change is made more difficult because academics, analysts and reductionists still dominate our broader educational culture. They will only evaluate interventions within the limits of their own outdated model. If a pictures worth a thousand words, it could be said that an experience is worth two thousand! But lets start with the picture. I deliver programmes lasting 2-5 days for business managers on the topic of coaching for performance in business. I make the theoretical case for what I call new coaching, but at a certain point I show a seven-minute video (spontaneous and unscripted) of two beginners learning to hit a golf ball for the first time. One is being taught conventionally by means of technical instruction, and I am coaching the other without giving any instructions or even telling her how to hold the club!

Socrates: possibly the worlds first new coach

Comparing the two processes and their results always has a great impact on the course participants. They invariably ridicule the conventional instructors efforts, but often someone adds: I had one lesson just like that. I hated it and gave up golf on my very first day. Needless to say, the beginner with whom I used new coaching, was delighted and astounded by the results of her selflearning progress. A picture is worth more than a thousand words! If weather, time and facilities permit, I then take the group outside and set them up in pairs with an inexperienced new coach coaching a beginner player. The progress often astounds again, but more importantly it shatters the conventional assumptions and beliefs listed earlier. The still inexperienced coach, who knows nothing about golf, is thrilled at the ability discovered by the player and the implication that it is perfectly possible to coach someone in a skill that he himself does not possess. For the player, discovering that she can learn a new skill without being dependent on an expert is thrilling. An experience like this is worth more than two thousand words. If this new coaching really were new, one might have expected sports educators to be anxious to take it on, even though the British sports establishment is renowned for being unadventurous and resistant to fresh ideas. But in fact there is nothing new about new coaching. Socrates, who died in 399 BC, was probably the first new coach. More recently, some 30 years ago, the Californian tennis coach Tim Gallwey resurrected the ancient philosopher to help with tennis. Tim wrote a book, The Inner Game of Tennis, that became a best seller not just among recreational players but people from other sports. Many coaches were

more sceptical, though, perhaps because the books message seemed to threaten their livelihood. Here I paraphrase Gallwey to summarise the Inner Game principles. You start to play the Inner Game when you realise that the opponent within your own head is more daunting than the one on the other side of the net. The outer game is played with a racket and a ball against another player; the Inner Game is played against anxiety, self-criticism, tension, frustration, a lack of self-belief, fear and anger. Your potential is your performance minus your internal obstacles. The Inner Game process aims to eliminate these internal obstacles to performance, learning and enjoyment and thereby liberate your potential. All sports people are familiar with such internal obstacles and keen to overcome them, but far fewer share Gallweys confidence that, as these obstacles recede, a natural, technically proficient player somehow emerges from within, without expert input. How does this happen? The best illustrations of this process come, in my experience, from skiing, because skiers of all standards are beset by fears. There is fear of falling, fear of getting hurt, fear of looking foolish, fear of loosing control, even fear of getting left behind or lost; and these fears generate huge amounts of muscular tension and inappropriate defensive body postures. Remove the fear and the posture becomes natural - in other words, it self-corrects.

How internal obstacles compromise performance

Confidence causes us to adopt a forward posture, which is essential for skiing. By contrast, fear encourages us to lean back, causing skis to accelerate and become unstable, so compounding the fear, and so on, leading to the inevitable conclusion. This is a fairly simple example of how internal obstacles compromise performance. Now lets consider a more complex illustration. When traversing a slope on skis, the correct technique for retaining ski edge grip is to turn the shoulders outwards and face down towards the valley. At first this seems an unnatural position. Beginner skiers find it daunting and want to turn inwards to get closer to the mountain for safety, which causes them to lose ski control. Is this a technical issue, or an internal obstacle? When we help skiers to remove the fear, they naturally adopt the position that gives them the best grip, something they discover from the feedback they get from the skis. That feedback, or sensory awareness, is inaccessible when one is overwhelmed by anxiety. Conversely, asking a person what he or she is feeling at the edge of the ski - the point of contact with the snow forces them to focus their attention to find the answer. This, in turn, leaves no space for other thoughts and emotions, such as fear and the tension that accompanies it. Non-critical focussed attention on experiencing (awareness) thereby dissolves internal interferences. The increased quantity and quality of feedback and the absence of fear delivers the technically correct position for that person. There is no one correct position for everyone because we all differ in terms of size, weight distribution, strength and flexibility. There is an optimum personal style for each of us, which we only find through self-awareness. Any observer, however expert, sees only the surface, the symptom, and can offer only general advice. The problem is, though, that a learner will often interpret a generality as a specific and strive to apply the advice rigidly, overriding his or her own self-awareness, leading to a counterproductive increase in tension. Lets consider one more example from skiing. A skiers legs are his suspension, and flexible knees with sufficient free movement up or down would seem advisable. The most frequent technical instruction ski instructors give is bend zee knees, in response to which skiers tend to adopt a fixed bent position, which gives rise to stiff suspension and poor ski grip. The instruction was technically correct, but the effect of giving it was counterproductive. This paradox is often unrecognised by conventional sports coaches, who repeat their commands ever more fervently. The most effective way to achieve the desired soft suspension effect is to ask awareness-raising coaching questions, such as: how much do your knees bend; when do they bend most in a turn; what happens when they are most bent, etc? I am often asked how long this learning lasts if the technique is not explained. Learning or performing better through awareness and discovery is massively different from being told what to do. What you are told enters the mind, but it is the body, not the mind, that plays tennis or skis. Awareness results in body-learning and, as we all know from riding a bicycle, the body forgets far less easily than the mind. Tactics are largely intellectual, but technique is physical.

Does your coaching build inner self-belief?

There are a multitude of other important distinctions between new and old coaching, but I will restrict myself to one, which I think is probably the most important of all. When we learn through discovery, we feel totally responsible for our own learning. We feel that we did it ourselves, and that builds our self-belief and self-confidence. If I could give one gift to a practitioner of any sport which, as the engine of success, is a bigger driver than technical ability and physical fitness combined. So how well does conventional instructional coaching serve as a method of building self-belief? Not well! And if you add to that the frustration that emanates from some coaches and the criticism they deal out to their students, especially children, we have an excellent formula for reducing self-belief. Of course, many coaches are moving away from old methods, but that is on their own initiative than because coach training is leading the change. In some circles, they are still regarded as mavericks. Change is coming and it will come, but it will be a case of too little, too late. Some 25 years ago I went with Tim Gallwey to meet a leading figure in British tennis, and we were speedily shown the door; 25 years ago we ran inner skiing courses in Zermatt, until we were run out of town by traditional ski instructors who considered our methods bizarre.

Two years ago, the British Tennis Coaches Association asked me to set up Inner Tennis training for coaches; two years ago, a new coaching ski school started up in Zermatt and the old ski school is now struggling to survive as customers desert it for something better. Twenty-three years is a long time, but much of sports coaching still sleeps on.

Awareness is the key principle of the new coaching

While struggling to penetrate the establishment in tennis and skiing, I was happy to find an open door in an unexpected area: business. Coaching was not a term that had been used before in business, so it had not accumulated the baggage of long-held beliefs and assumptions. Consequently, some 20 years ago we were able to apply new coaching to business performance and learning with trainers, managers and executives. I wrote a book entitled Coaching for Performance, to define coaching practice in business. It soon became a best seller, published in 12 languages, and is now in its third edition in which I refer to the next frontier for coaching. It will be nice when sport catches up with the last one! Changes in coaching should keep pace with evolution in psychological understanding, but coach education is slow to respond. Old coaching was based upon longstanding behavioural and cognitive principles, which were discovered to be incomplete and were enhanced by humanistic principles as far back as the sixties. Tim Gallwey grew up in that era, and the Inner Game parallels humanistic principles of which awareness was the key. But Tim and others were already looking ahead to the next evolution of psychology that was waiting in the wings; known as transpersonal psychology, this embraces the will, choice and personal responsibility and takes an even more holistic view of people and their development. It is fast finding its way into business practice. In my view psychological evolution must lead coaching methodology. People from every sport pay lip service to the idea that it is all in the mind, but for some coaches technical knowledge remains the be-all and the end-all.

3. Thought Suppression: A Paradoxical Effect - Lee Crust

Pay attention now: dont think about the referee and his biased decisions. Are you succeeding in not thinking about him? If you have ever tried to suppress disruptive or irritating thoughts, you will know that it is easier said than done and recent research suggests we might actually achieve the opposite, just as trying hard to go to sleep may actually serve to keep us awake. A team of researchers from the University of Western Australia have examined the dubious benefits of thought suppression in a sporting context in two studies using videotaped clips of Australian Rules Football. In the first study, involving 102 under-graduates, participants watched a video with short sequences focusing on players, coaches and umpires, and were then asked to complete a brief questionnaire to assess their awareness of target images. Before this task, they were divided into three groups, as follows: 1. General asked simply to view the video and answer a questionnaire describing what they had seen; 2. Suppression of intention to harm additionally asked not to pay attention to players attempting to harm others; 3. Suppression of umpires asked not to pay attention to umpires. The researchers also manipulated cognitive load (played distracting background noises to simulate increased stress levels) to test the theory that stressful conditions would aggravate the difficulties of thought suppression. As predicted, analysis of the results revealed that subjects asked to suppress their attention to umpires actually paid more attention to them than those whose thoughts were allowed to roam freely. However, this effect was not apparent in the group asked to suppress awareness of intention to harm, and was not aggravated by distracting external stimuli. The researchers offer two possible explanations for this discrepancy: first, there were significantly fewer intention to harm images than those featuring umpires; secondly, intention to harm may have been too subjective a focus to be interpreted meaningfully by the students. The research was later extended using a further 64 students, who viewed the same footage but were assigned to one of just two conditions: 1. Suppression of umpires, as in the first study, and 2. Suppression of umpires plus cue word (a word to aid refocusing of attention to task-relevant cues, such as the ball). The results of this study showed that under conditions of high cognitive load (with distracting background noise considered similar to that of stressful conditions) the additional use of a task-relevant cue word was significantly more effective in suppressing unwanted focus than suppression alone (36% v 65%). A suggested explanation for these findings is that when thought suppression is attempted without a new focus, the unwanted thought is likely to return quite quickly. The key to effective thought-suppression thus seems to be replacing the undesired thought with a preferred option. From a practical viewpoint, this research demonstrates that thought-suppressing techniques have to be carefully applied. Simply instructing someone not to attend to a distracting stimulus may be ineffective or, even worse, damaging to performance. To gain maximum benefit from the process, the Australian researchers argue that it is essential especially in conditions of high stress to follow any attempts to clear the mind and stop unwanted thoughts with an effort to refocus on a task-relevant cue.

4. Sports Psychology:
Thought Control - Lee Crust
When it comes to doing your best, its the thoughts that count. When it comes to running or any other endurance sport your mind can be your biggest asset or your worst enemy. Enjoying your training and achieving your best performances is not simply down to physical conditioning: your mental states and, particularly, the thoughts that run through your mind can affect the way you feel during exercise. It is normal for athletes to plan their race strategy in minute detail, but how many systematically plan what they are going to think about during training or competition? Having worked with and questioned athletes on their thoughts over a number of years, I can tell you that the number who do plan their thoughts is surprisingly small. I say surprising because, as a sport psychologist, I am aware of what scientific research has been showing for a number of years: that thoughts do matter. In fact the nature and quality of your thoughts can make the difference between winning or losing, enjoying or hating your training, and may impact on your decision to stay with an exercise programme. Much of this scientific evidence comes from studies of marathon runners. Neuroscientists have shown that we have thousands of thoughts running through our minds each and every day. Athletes spend a large percentage of their time thinking sport-related thoughts, but most of these are unplanned and random. The first step towards becoming more organised and purposeful in your thinking is to become more aware of them. So when you next go for a training run, cycle or swim, try to become more aware of what you are thinking about.

Table 1 techniques for dissociation

1. Music This can generate positive thoughts, improve your mood state and distract you from the physical demands of your sport. But be careful not to get too distracted if you are running in a busy area; 2. Counting game Count the number of blue cars you see, or the number of dogs of post boxes. Be inventive; 3. Alphabet game Work through from A to Z for a chosen category, such as womens names or countries; 4. Rainbow game Try to notice as many colours as possible while you work out: aim for all the colours of the rainbow; 5. Active fantasy Imagine yourself as a lottery winner and decide how to spend your winnings. Avoid thoughts relating to your work, jobs you have to do and anything problematic, as this can increase tension. Try to be creative and have fun with dissociation. It can help you relax and enjoy your sport even more.

Association and dissociation

So what should you be thing about? Two very different mental strategies have emerged, with both commonly used by elite and other runners. Association involves focusing on bodily sensations and monitoring any changes usually internal that occur. Breathing rate and muscular sensations provide physiological cues that allow you to pace yourself with a view to avoiding or minimising pain. By contrast dissocation is about directing attention away from bodily sensations by a form of distraction designed to reduce the athletes awareness of fatigue or effort. This can be achieved by many means, including music. However, more active strategies like counting tasks or the alphabet game (see table 1) might be more effective. I am often asked which of these strategies is best. There is no simple answer, but a recent review of scientific research in this area came to the following conclusions (1): 1. In general, association appears to be linked to faster running times; 2. Dissociation can reduce the sense of effort and awareness of physical sensations such as pain and fatigue usually up to moderate-to-high intensity; 3. Athletes of all levels appear to favour association in competition and dissociation in training; 4. Elite athletes tend to use both strategies during training and races, and are able to switch between the two, as required. When trying to decide which strategy might be best for you, it is important to consider your personal situation, preferences and goals. For example, most athletes perform training runs at a slower pace than they use in competition, making body monitoring less essential. A better goal for training might be to relieve boredom and monotony, in which case dissociation, with active mental processing, might be most beneficial. Dissociation may also benefit athletes who want to improve their endurance by running or exercising for longer at moderate intensities. However, because dissociation works by distracting the mind, it might work against an athlete setting an ideal pace for optimum performance. The reason why association appears so important in competition is that, by monitoring his bodily responses, an athlete can ride that thin line between pushing for maximum performance and overdoing it.

Association involves entering a more concentrated state when you can react to changes within your body. And focusing on internal states like rhythmical breathing can help you feel more relaxed during physical activity (see table 2). But, on the down side, there is some evidence of a link between association and injury; some athletes, it appears, choose to associate with pain and fatigue-related symptoms and end up pushing themselves too hard. Most successful elite marathon runners have been shown to combine associative and dissociative strategies when planning their thoughts. There are times, especially in races, when you need to be very aware of your own physical state and of events in the external environment. However, there are also times when you can plan to switch off and give yourself a break from the mental demands of competition or training. The best thing is to construct a plan with your coach, exercise leader or even a more experienced fellow athlete. Try to decide between you what is the best approach for you, and plan what you will be thinking about during the race or training sessions. For a 30-minute training run you might decide on cyclic phases of thinking- e.g. 10 minutes of body monitoring, 10 minutes of alphabet game, then more body monitoring to the end. Its all perfectly logical once you get started: you wouldnt leave your physical preparations to chance, so why allow your thoughts to crop up in random fashion.

Table 2 techniques for associative body monitoring Follow this three-stage plan:
Focus on your breathing: controlled, relatively deep rhythmic breathing is the key to relaxation. When you breathe out, try to imagine the tension leaving your body; 2. Try to remain relaxed while running (or cycling or swimming), but be aware of tension and fatigue in your muscles. Its often a good idea to start from the head and work down, giving each area or group of muscles your attention. If you notice tension, try to focus on a cue word, such as relax or easy and try to let the tension flow out of the muscles; 3. Keep your pace in line with the information you gain from body monitoring. You might, for example, increase the pace if you feel very positive. Repeat the monitoring constantly or, alternatively, take some time out for dissociation. You might also reinforce your mood by telling yourself how well you are doing and that you need to keep working hard and remain focused. 1.

Self-talk
When running, cycling or swimming for long periods of time, the mind can wander freely, if you let it. When this happens, your natural internal dialogue or self-talk becomes important. If your concentration does stray or your body monitoring detects fatigue, it is vital that your self-talk remains positive. The best thing is to avoid over-emotional self-talk and focus on selfinstructing, motivational content. To this end, you can plan and even rehearse what you are going to say to yourself beforehand, just like your might rehearse an important telephone call or lecture. The key is to stay positive even when the situation is less than ideal. This is not an easy feat to pull off and will take some time to master. The first step in this process is to become more aware of your thoughts during training and competition. If you want to gain more control over your thoughts, try to formulate a simple plan and try it out over a number of weeks during training. If you notice any undesirable patterns in your thinking, such as negative self-talk or loss of focus, you can try to combat these by planning more positive alternative thoughts. You can, for example, frame positive statements that you repeat to yourself regularly. Ideally, write these statements down and place them in prominent positions where you cant avoid seeing them. Work on recalling these statements when you become aware of negative thoughts or feelings. This might seem a little strange at first, but you are actually programming your brain to notice more positives and, over time, with will become a habit. Athletes often recall that their very best performances are accompanied by few thoughts, a feeling of complete control, effortless movements and a sense of being on automatic pilot. Sport psychologists often refer to this as a state of flow. The aspects of positive thinking and focus discussed in this article have been shown to increase the likelihood of achieving flow, although environmental factors can also be important. Dont leave your psychological preparation to chances. Remember that you control your thoughts, not the other way round. The way you think is strongly linked to the way you perform. So if you want to perform better, gain greater control and enjoy your sport more, start planning today because in this sphere the thoughts really do count.

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5. Encouragement:
How It Boosts Performance
Offering verbal encouragement to athletes attempting maximal effort is entirely instinctive. Indeed it is almost impossible to imagine a situation in which coaches, parents, fellow athletes and friends would stand silent on the sidelines, instead of shouting out such original motivators as: keep it going, go for it, push it and other such statements. But what evidence do we have that this form of verbal encouragement actually works? Very little, according to a team of US researchers, who decided to test the value of verbal encouragement in a controlled study. They explain: Although the use of encouraging statements is a ubiquitous feature of maximal exercise testing, few studies have examined the effects of frequency of encouragement on exercise performance. Those that havehave not provided sufficient procedural details to evaluate these effects. Furthermore, no study has systematically varied the frequency of verbal encouragement. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of frequency of verbal encouragement on exercise performance. A group of 28 students from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania (12 men and 16 women) performed a treadmill test designed to elicit a maximal effort in less than 12 minutes without any verbal encouragement. At the end of each three-minute exercise stage, ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) were recorded and blood samples taken. The test ended when the participant either attained V02max or became exhausted. The participants were then placed into one of four experimental groups, each matched for overall fitness, and performed a second exercise one week later. During this test, the control group received no verbal encouragement at all, while the other three groups received verbal encouragement ever 20, 60 and 180 seconds respectively, beginning with stage 3 of the exercise test i.e. after six minutes. Verbal encouragement consisted of a set of encouraging statement read from a prepared text. These statements, including Way to go!, Come on!, Good job!, Excellent!, Come on, push it!, Keep it up! and Lets go!, were rehearsed by the investigators beforehand, kept at a constant volume and accompanied by hand clapping. For each group, comparisons were made between the two tests for key variables, including relative VO2max, exercise time, blood lactate concentration, respiratory exchange ratio (RER) and ratings of perceived exertion (RPE), with the following results: 1. There were no significant differences between one test and the other for the control group (no verbal encouragement) and the 180E group (infrequent encouragement); 2. The second test values of the 60E group were significantly higher than their first test values for relative VO2max, blood lactate concentration, RER and RPE; 3. The second test values of the 20E group were significantly higher on all these measures and also for exercise time. The results suggest, conclude the researchers, that frequent verbal encouragement (every 20s and 60s in the present study) leads to significantly greater maximum effort in a treadmill test than when no encouragement is given or when the encouragement is infrequent Our results clearly show that verbal encouragement intended to increase a persons maximal effort has profound effects on performance. But what were the psychological mechanisms behind this increased maximal effort. The researchers, who can only speculate, offer several possible explanations: 1. Talking to the participants might have distracted them from the discomfort of the test and made it less aversive (the so-called dissociative strategy); 2. Some of the encouragement statements (e.g. Excellent! and Good job! can be seen as positive reinforcers, helping to maintain the running response; 3. Others (e.g. Come on!, Keep it up! and Lets go! resembled instructional commands, which might lead to greater response effort since most people have a history of following instructions; 4. Some of the statements might have acted as establishing operations, increasing the value of the stimuli that reinforce running on the treadmill (i.e. achieving a competitive goal, looking good, avoiding failure). The mechanisms by which these effects are mediated are clearly complex and should be addressed in future research, the researchers acknowledge.

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6. Mental strength:
When you can manage your emotions, you can perform at your best - George
Karseras, senior consultant at Sporting Bodymind, the UK's first sports psychology consultancy
At Sporting Bodymind we help our clients develop mental fitness. At the top level it is not your physical or technical expertise which separates you from the competition but your mental toughness. To be outstanding you have to hold your nerve, perform under the most intense pressure, and consistently turn it on even when you don't feel at your best. Mental toughness is what makes Michael Jordan and Pete Sampras so special. These athletes know their real battle is not so much on the court, but inside their heads. You absolutely must manage your mental side if you want to be the best. Given that mental strength is so vital, I find it truly amazing that it is so neglected in training routines. If you are one of those athletes who spends all your training time on technique and fitness while paying no attention to your mental side, you are doing yourself a serious disservice. We know from countless studies that mental skills are acquirable and you can, with practice, learn to perform mentally. You can improve your confidence, concentration, motivation and anxiety levels if you chose to. At Sporting Bodymind we show you how.

Four important principles

Feelings affect your performance. Whether you are aware of them or not, how you feel affects how you perform. Feelings are based on what you imagine or interpret from an event and not from the event itself. Two players appearing in the Wimbledon final for the first time will imagine different things about the match. One might imagine she will be unable to play well in such a big final. This player is likely to feel nervous and uncertain and her performance will be poor. The other might imagine it as the experience of a lifetime for her to go out and enjoy - she might feel liberated and relaxed and her play is likely to reflect these emotions. The same event evokes two different responses which result in two very different performances.The message here is very simple - learn how to change your interpretations and you learn how to manage your emotions. When you can manage your emotions you can perform at your best. The mind and the body are inextricable linked - how you feel physically affects how you feel emotionally. This means that we can improve our mental performance using physical interventions (relaxation exercises) and vice versa. You operate within a system - your performance is just a symptom or outcome of how your system operates. The parts of your system are all interrelated. A cricket player's confidence may be affected by his technique, which may be affected by his fitness, which may be affected by his lifestyle which may be affected by his time management. It is always more potent to look to remedy the underlying causes of a problem than the symptom itself. If Alan Shearer is not scoring goals, the problem might lie not with him but with the midfield who are not creating chances for him ( a moot point in this case). In situations where your performance was greatly influenced by your relationship with another person, I would conduct a pairs session with you and this person (coach or parent). As humanistic psychologists, we believe that under the right circumstances you will want to reach your potential. Our focus is not just on your performance but also on your welfare. Often the two are linked. You can divide mental skills training into two approaches: individual work and group work. A standard programme for both may last for a minimum of six weeks with sessions of 60-90 minutes.

Individual work
You would go through three phases. First. you and I would gain as much of an understanding as possible of your situation by me asking you questions. I would need to know your goals, skills, experience, resources, background, any factors which are constraining you and any factors which are supporting you. My aim is to increase your self-awareness during this process, so that wherever possible you find the solutions and suggest changes yourself. The second phase is the strategy or intervention stage. Here, together, we formulate a strategy to reduce your constraints and increase your resources. This is a joint process, so that rather than me telling you what to do, we move forward together. Without buying into a programme you would be far less likely to stick to it. The interventions I would use would fall into two types, associative and analytic. Associative interventions such as visualisations and relaxation exercises use the right-hand side of the brain. Analytic interventions such as goal-setting and selftalk exercises use the left-hand side of the brain . We like to use a combination of both but we pay particular attention to associative exercises because more right-brain activity has been recorded in athletes during peak performances. The final phase is for me to provide you with support as you progress through your programme. In some situations such as you being irrational I would challenge you as well as offering you continuous encouragement.

Team approach
We start a team workshop with a "warm-up". We ask the team members to arrange themselves so that their "place" suits the purpose of our meeting. Usually we ask the team to sit in a circle of chairs so that the whole team can see each other, rather than focussing on us or the coach. Before discussing the purpose and agenda, team members would pay attention to themselves, then another person in the team, and then the team would perform some kind of team activity. At the end of the warm-up, the team has tuned into its team identity (what it is and what it can be) and is ready to achieve its potential.

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Our approach to teambuilding is based on our early work with Tottenham Football Club during the early 80's. We focus on the relationships which exist within the team system. A football team of 11 players has 55 different relationships. Any one of these relationships can affect someone else's performance. Our work increases team members' understanding of what they need from each other to perform at their best. We aim to increase team members self-awareness, their awareness of others, their awareness of how other members are different to them and their appreciation of these differences. Only when they have gone through these phases can they see their team colleagues as they really are are and not as they imagine them to be. Communication and change then become easier. We also teach team members the communication skills which enhance trust and respect. These are typically speaking, listening, questioning and feedback skills. The latter are probably the most important. We teach descriptive rather than evaluative feedback. This means that instead of saying something like, "you're a selfish player, you never pass the ball to me", we would ask Garth Crooks to say to Steve Archibald ,"during the last game I was in a scoring situation three times and each time you failed to pass to me. I get really frustrated when that happens". We encourage the latter way of talking because descriptions provide far more information than opinions. Also, Steve Archibald could not have argued that he did not pass the ball three times, but he could have argued that he was not a selfish player. Nor could he argue with the impact of frustration he had on his team-mate. Both events really happened. After receiving this type of feedback, Steve was more likely to change his behaviour. Whether you compete as an individual or as part of a team, your performance can be improved by practising your mental skills. If you do not work on your mental side, isn't it about time you started ?

Case study
Billy was a junior county rugby player who had tried several times to get into the England team without success. He came to see me with six weeks to go before a trial for the Under-18 team.

1 - Understanding the system

Billy's goals were to perform well in the trial, to get into the team and to have a bearable life leading up to the trial. He complained of being so nervous during the weeks and days before a trial that he would stop eating and sleeping and become incredibly anxious. Billy was a talented and consistent performer outside the trial situation, Everyone expected him to get into the trial on this occasion and this was making him feel even more nervous. Billy's main concern was scoring high enough on the fitness test. As a 14-year-old he had been labelled as lazy and unfit by a school coach and had dreaded fitness tests ever since. Billy also tended to think a lot about what other people said about him and during trials would let his colleagues performances, especially if they were good, affect his own. Billy needed to improve his self-confidence and reduce his pre- trial anxiety in order to perform at his best.

2 - Strategy
Billy's main constraints were his self-perception of his fitness, the exaggerated emphasis he was placing on the fitness test, his tendency to judge his own performance by the standards of his peers, the priority he was attaching to the physical and technical aspects of his game at the expense of the mental side, and the critical way he spoke to himself during his performances (which was draining his confidence). Supporting him was his commitment, his technical and physical skills, his experience of being in the trial situations and the supportive resources he had around him (parents, club and peers). Working together, we minimised his constraints. By conducting a self-assessment of the most important criteria required for trial success (physical, technical and mental) we developed a training strategy which realigned his training time more appropriately. This also served to put his fitness test into perspective as it was only one of17 criteria he had to satisfy. By increasing his fitness preparation Billy was able to improve his self confidence. By visually re editing past fitness failures with pictures of himself performing well in the test, Billy was also able to increase his fitness confidence. By mentally rehearsing the whole trial performance, Billy was able to increase his general levels of confidence. Together we conducted the gestalt therapy technique of the empty chair', which involved literally having a conversation with himself. As a result, Billy increased his selfawareness, becoming more conscious of his internal dialogue. Practising giving descriptive feedback in the moment (saying only how he was feeling or what he could see or hear) allowed him to move from imagining the future (which usually made him feel anxious) to paying attention to the present and with it what he needed to do in the moment (thereby increasing his efficacy). Billy also recorded insights and learning experiences in a journal which further increased his self-awareness. Billy began to maximise his resources by choosing to spend his time only with people who were supportive of him, and by channelling his drive and energy into our mental skills programme.

3 - Support
Billy saw me six times and worked extremely hard in between our sessions. I gave him encouragement to persevere with the programme as well as challenging him whenever appropriate. For example, when he said things like "everyone else is so relaxed and confident" I would say, "you imagine they are confident, but what exactly do you see or hear which suggests that they are?". Billy soon began to recognise the difference between reality and his interpretation of reality. With this followed a different emotional response and with it a different, more supportive behavioural response.

Outcome
Billy's ratings in seven out of his 17 criteria improved, with none decreasing. He reported feeling less anxious about his trial and more confident in his ability to perform well. At the trial itself he did exactly that. He even put himself forward to demonstrate a few skills which is something he has never done before. Ultimately Billy was successful in getting through to a core England team for the first time ever.

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7. Sports Psychology:
Why 'good enough' is actually better than perfect (and a lot more fun, too)
Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote an acclaimed book called A Good Enough Parent which stressed that in the age of fantasy concepts such as 'Superwoman', parents should concentrate on reality: they should accept that perfection in relationships within the family just doesn't exist and concentrate instead on being - well, good enough. It's a theme echoed by many sports psychologists and one of the most cogent expositions of the theme that we've come across recently is from Dr Patrick J Cohn. He works predominantly with golfers, but his comments apply to sportspeople of all disciplines. Many perfectionists I work with get stuck in a so-called practice or training mindset and find it difficult to develop 'game selfconfidence'. They are more comfortable in practice than in competition. When performing, expectations are so high that they become easily frustrated and can't have fun. If you are a perfectionist, here are my tips for playing with greater confidence.

1. Don't expect so much

High expectations can make your feel like a failure - no matter what you do. It's just not realistic to expect perfection every time. High expectations make you judge your performance all the time. If you don't reach your expectations, you view your effort as a failure. Setting attainable goals for practice and what you want to accomplish in your sport is a better option.

2. Emphasise fun, not being perfect

You are probably very hard on yourself in practice. The tension and frustration you experience partially results from an overemphasis on trying to be perfect. Try to have fun with practice. Enjoy the time you spend practising.

3. Don't dwell on shortcomings

If you are a perfectionist, you spend a lot of time dwelling on the mistakes you make and on weaknesses. This is unhealthy for your self-confidence and doesn't let you enjoy the game. You are not a failure; you just choose to think more about your faults. You have to make the choice to think about what you did well in practice today and remember the good plays instead of replaying the bad ones repeatedly.

4. Give yourself permission to make mistakes

Perfectionists think that anything less than a flawless practice is a failure. You have to accept that you are human and you will have bad days just like everyone else. Sometimes it helps to give yourself permission to make mistakes. You're not perfect and even the best players in the world make mistakes. Allow yourself the flexibility to hit four or five poor shots a day.

5. Play or compete as much as you practice

You don't want to get too comfortable with practice and not have the confidence when you play your sport. Try to compete at least as much as you practise your sport. For every four hours of practice, try to get involved in a competition of some sort. You want to have the confidence that you can perform in competition, not just in practice.

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8. Mental Strength:
To improve your performance, you have to start by fortifying your mind Frank Horwill
A friend was in a cancer ward and his treatment involved going without food and water for eight weeks. He survived on a drip and lost three stone in weight. Around him other patients frequently died. It was a depressing period. Asked how he coped with tubes into and out of his stomach and down his throat he, replied: 'I start each day by saying 'I'm going to enjoy this day' and then I ask myself 'Whom can I help today?'' This is a good philosophy for all sportspeople to adopt. Nearly 40 years ago the great Australian runner Ron Clarke broke world records for two miles, three miles and six miles, and 3000 and 5000m, as well as the distance run in one hour. The 10,000m world record, however, had eluded him many times, and on one of his training runs by the sea, he was pondering why this was so when, in the distance, he heard much squealing and splashing coming from a rocky alcove. Out of curiosity he ran towards the scene and discovered a group of children lying on their backs in the shallow water and throwing a ball to each other. Then he noticed a row of collapsible wheel chairs. The children were all paralysed. He turned away from the scene and muttered to himself: 'What am I bothering about the 10,000m world record for?' Sporting performance should always be put into perspective. The word 'recreation' literally means recreating our mind and body. Because we can, we should. If we enjoy sport we will enjoy it more if we get better at it. Improving involves the allocation of time. Our lives revolve around the three eights - eight hours work, eight hours sleep, eight hours free time. Some of the free time is required for taking meals and for travelling to and from work. At the very least we can find one hour a day to practise our sport. When we choose that hour is our prerogative. The world's first sub-four-minute miler, Roger Bannister, was a medical student at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. He chose to use his lunch hour for a 10-minute jog to Paddington track. There he ran 10 x 440yds in about 60secs with two minutes rest, then he ran back to work. The whole procedure took exactly 48 minutes, leaving him time for lunch. If you want to train for sport you can always fit it in somehow. We are at our physical peak in sport for about five years, although we may compete in one way or another for 25 years. This means that you should regard every training session - like every day - as a precious piece of your time. Regard it as an investment which will pay dividends in the future. The more we invest, the better our return.

Start small - and then grow

Training must have a point. It is a journey towards a destination, a fixed point in our minds. The terminus must be both reachable and challenging. Let's suppose it is to run a mile in under four minutes. What will it take to do this? First of all you have to become familiar with the pace: 59secs per 400m, not 60secs per lap, which is only a 4:04 result. You can achieve this by taking segments of the distance and running them at the appropriate speed. You may have to start with very small sections such as 200m until you can do twice the actual distance, i.e. 16 x 200m in 29.5secs. You want to get them all done on time but with some difficulty; a recovery time of double the time of the effort will suffice (59secs). When you can handle that, extend the segment a further 100m to 300m at the same speed with the same rest as before (59secs). In so doing, you are getting used to sustained running. Eventually you reach the point where you can run 1200m non-stop in 2:57 and you are on your way! In order to help the body's acceptance of 59secs per 400m you need to train faster than that: say, 55secs per 400m. For this you will have to do fewer (but better) efforts, with more recovery, e.g. 4 x 400m in 55secs with 3-4mins rest. When you can handle that comfortably, you can consider reducing the recovery time in blocks of 15 seconds until you may eventually repeat the session with only half of the original rest time. This may take several weeks, months or even years. But the point is that you are still travelling towards your destination; it may be long and difficult, but you must stick to the route. Though the feat itself may be beyond most if us - and I have, of course, simplified for effect - you have just witnessed a classic piece of progressive training: starting small, then growing.

Do more of what you dislike

Whatever distance a race is, that distance assumes major, and often exaggerated, proportions in the mind. To a predominantly 400m runner, the 800m event looks like a marathon! Athletes have to conquer that fear of the distance. Roger Bannister did it by running 3 x 1.5 miles but slower per lap than his intended sub-four-minute mile. If the mile seems formidable, it will be less so if you regularly run two miles. You can start cautiously by running eight consecutive laps of the track at 10secs per lap slower than in your target mile, i.e. 69secs per 400m. You should keep practising this until you get major reductions. This is not just theory: as a novice, Glen Cunningham (USA) was ignorant of training methods. He repeatedly ran the mile distance in training and racing and tried to reduce the time for each race. He got used to the distance all right, but he reached a plateau of performance. Then he met a coach who encouraged him to race 880yds and two miles and then the mile; he also encouraged him to train at these different speeds. He broke the world mile record within a year. There are many 800m runners who shun the 1500m event, and many 1500m runners who avoid 3000 and 5000m races. Similarly, they do not entertain running under-distance. Like Cunningham, they stick to one distance and stagnate. They are scared of not looking as good as they do in their main event. This brings me to a very important maxim for fortifying the mind: whatever you most dislike in training and racing, do more of it!

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Derek Ibbotson disliked sprinting, and consequently he was outsprinted in many races. He decided to spend a winter with his club's sprint group in addition to maintaining his normal cross-country training. He became one of the fastest finishers ever in mile races. He also broke the world record for the mile.

Training the will-power

Professor McDougall, a famous psychological writer some 40 years ago, stated that the seemingly useless practice of each day taking all the matches out of a matchbox and, one by one, arranging them in a line on a table, was an exercise that would strengthen will-power. We don't hear much about will-power training in sport. We often hear about 'the will to win' but where does this will come from? Are we born with it or can we acquire it? Oscar Wilde aptly summed up the weak-willed when he said: 'I can resist everything except temptation'. Athletes have to resist certain excessive social behaviour patterns, which are accepted as the norm elsewhere in society. This is defensive use of the will. Can we go on the offensive? We can - and in doing so, improve our performance. A middle-aged female took up running for the marathon. She had not participated in sport of any kind for 25 years. She was told to run for one minute and each successive day to add a minute. Because she had such a short stride, her leg strength was tested by making her hop 25 metres. She took 22 hops to cover the distance (world-class middle-distance runners can do it in nine). She was told to do hopping exercises every other day. After 100 days this woman was running for 100 minutes and had reduced her total hops to 15. The secret of her success was to start with a very minor challenge and to build on it. Many start too ambitiously and break down, giving the will a severe dent in the process.

Nine top fortifying tips

In summary, here are my nine top tips for fortifying the mind: * Start each day with a declaration of intent: 'I am going to enjoy this day'. * You can run; many cannot and will not run. Some have never known what it is like to run. Make the most of it while you can. * You can train every day for at least one hour. There is no excuse not to. * Train with a goal in mind. * The method of achieving this goal must involve rehearsing the activity and aids to that activity. * Competition must not only include the specific event but other events which will test endurance and speed. * Exercise your will specifically by daily devoting time to the task you dislike most in training, or to a known weakness * When it comes to competition, if you have trained diligently and intelligently and done your best, you have succeeded. You are only a failure if you have not done these things. * Start small and progress.

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9. Visual Training Programmes for Sport:

Why they don't work - Isabel Walker
Sports coaches, performers and scientists are constantly on the lookout for new ways to enhance sports performance and gain competitive advantage. One of the latest techniques on offer is visual training - a series of repetitive eye exercises prescribed by sports optometrists in a bid to improve basic visual functions and, consequently, sports performance. Despite the growing use of these programmes and the strong claims made on their behalf, the evidence supporting them has never been better than anecdotal. And now a carefully designed experimental study has come to the damning conclusion that the Emperor's new clothes don't actually exist! Australian researchers Bruce Abernethy and Joanne Wood found 'no evidence that the visual training programmes led to improvements in either vision or motor performance above and beyond those resulting simply from test familiarity'. In their study 40 male and female undergraduates were split into four different groups, as follows: 1. Visual training group using exercises from Revien and Gabor's Sports Vision programme for athletes, with four 20minute visual training sessions and one 20-minute motor practice session (using tennis forehand drives) per week for four weeks; 2. Visual training group using Revien's Eyerobics video-based training programme, following the same protocol as group 1; 3. Reading group, spending four 20-minute sessions per week reading about and watching televised tennis matches, with one motor practised session, as for group 1; 4. Control group, receiving no training of any kind with just one 20-minute practise session per week. Groups 1-3 were given preliminary statements about the expected positive effects on sports performance of the training they were undertaking, to give them the same expectations of benefits. Various visual and motor parameters were tested before and after the four-week study and the results compared. If generalised visual training programmes were indeed effective, the researchers would have expected to see significant improvements in both vision and motor performance in the visual training groups. But these improvements were not evident. 'Neither the Sports Vision programme by Group 1 nor the Eyerobics programme experienced by Group 2 were able to produce persistent improvements in vision or in motor performance that could be attributed to selective exposure to the visual training,' the researchers report. 'Pre-to-post-training improvements in performance were evident on some measures, but these improvements were experienced by all participants in the experiment and were due, therefore, to test familiarity and not to the visual training programmes.' Why don't these programmes work? Probably, say the researchers, for the fundamental reason that 'they attempt to train general visual factors that are now known not to be the limiting factor to sports performance'. Abernethy and Wood conclude somewhat mildly that generalised visual training programmes of the type advocated by sports optometrists should be used 'with caution' These programmes do not appear to provide the improvements in either basic visual function or motor performance relevant to sport that they claim to produce.'

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10. Winning:
The relevant question is not "Did you win?" but "Did you come up to your expectations?" - Bruce Tulloh
The greater the prizes in sport, the more emphasis there is on winning. The greater the emphasis on winning, the harder it is to be a loser. However, there is only one winner in, say, the Open golf championship or the Wimbledon men's singles. Does this mean that all the others are losers? Certainly not. Before we analyse the reasons for success and failure, we must define the terms. I will deal with distance running because that is the only sport in which I can claim detailed knowledge, but I am sure that my conclusions can be applied across the range of individual sports. Running is easier to analyse because performances are measurable and the sport itself is pretty simple. There is not a lot of skill in running it is mostly a matter of fitness and character. Losers and winners The loser is the person who produces great training performances but does not live up to them in races. The winner is the one whose performance under pressure is greater than you would expect from his training. The loser is the person who develops injuries and minor illnesses just before the big events. The winner is the person who copes with minor setbacks and still performs to his best when it matters. The loser is the person who looks very impressive when against familiar, weaker opposition but who cannot cope with the challenge of competing against those who are apparently better than him. The winner is the person who is not overawed by better opposition but rises to the challenge. The patterns can be seen more clearly in running than in almost any other sport because we have the times to go by. A few years ago I was running in a road race in Devon against a local athlete, let us call him Shanks, who was a little older than me and had always beaten me in my early years. On this occasion he had heard that I was off form, whereas in fact I had just been going through a hard training period. We had a really hard race and I broke my own course record, but he beat me by half a minute because he believed that he was better than me on that day. When it came to the next national event, I won and he was nowhere because he did not believe that he could perform well at that level. Shanks obviously had the physical ability but lacked the right mental approach.

What causes people to fail?

First of all, everyone has a physical limit. All the self-belief in the world won't enable you to run five miles in 20 minutes. All that we can hope for is to keep on improving for as long as possible, gradually pushing back our physical limits. In that time, we try to compete at our own level, attempting to get as much success as our talents will allow us. The relevant question is not 'Did you win?' but 'Did you come up to your expectations?' If the answer to this question is 'no', the coach should look for both physical and mental explanations. Very often the single poor performance is due to an infection, overtiredness or something like eating at the wrong time. However, if there is consistently a gap between training and racing performances, there may well be something wrong with the mental attitude. Let us take two hypothetical runners, Alphonse and Bertrand. Alphonse has lots of natural speed. He can run 400 metres in under 50 seconds on very little training and he has run 1.49 for 800 metres. He was a national junior champion but now, although he wins club 1500m races easily in 3.53, he has only progressed to 3.48 and cannot get into the senior finals. Bertrand, on the other hand, was not a junior champion. His best 800m is 1 .5 1, but he has run 1 500m in 3.44 and has been picked for the under-23 team. Alphonse is becoming depressed because he is not improving and he is getting beaten by Bertrand. Bertrand is feeling cheerful and more and more confident about his training because he is improving all the time. The key lies in their early experiences. Because he had so much ability, Alphonse did not need to train hard as a youngster, nor did he need to push himself very hard to win races. Bertrand, however, had to train hard as a youngster to come up to a decent standard, and he has always had to work hard. When Alphonse fails, he thinks 'I'm a loser'. When Bertrand fails, he thinks 'I shall have to work harder'. As they come up to a big competition, Bertrand is thinking 'This is a great opportunity for me' and Alphonse is thinking 'What if I fail again?' Early experiences cannot be eradicated, but the mind can be 'reprogrammed' so as to change the mental attitude towards Altering selfperceptions The way a runner approaches a race depends on how he sees himself. If he feels that he lacks finishing speed, he worries if there is anyone near him as the race approaches the finish. If he feels that he lacks endurance, he will be worried by a fast early pace. He may in fact be perfectly capable of dealing with the situation, but self-doubt is usually fatal. What needs to be done is to follow a training and racing programme to deal with that weakness. If a half-marathon runner has a season of training and racing at 5000 metres he will find that his times for the shorter distance improve a lot. When he returns to road racing, he can say to himself 'I've run 14.20 for 5000m. I've got more speed than anyone else here, so I can relax until the last mile'.

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If the runner is worried about lack of endurance, the coach simply has to increase the volume of training and, in particular, the length of the longest run. When I was moving up from 5000m to 10,000m, I increased my long Sunday runs to 1820 miles, instead of 10-12, and I even ran in a 20mile race in April, so that when it came to running a mere six miles I knew that I could handle the distance.

Increasing aggression...
Man is a tribal animal. He is used to hierarchies or 'pecking orders'. Runners, like hens, tend to settle into accepted places within a group. If you are used to being in front and winning races, you will not be happy with anything else. If you have always been at the tail-end of a bunch of good runners, you may be improving physically but you will not have experienced the feeling of being in front, dominating the race. It is a good thing to run in fast races against better people to try to extend your limits, but it is also good to run in minor races which you can win, to get that winning feeling. It has been shown that testosterone levels rise after winning a race, so the 'winning streak' may become easier to maintain as it gets longer, and I would certainly advise a carefully chosen race programme before a championship event.

...and decreasing anxiety

Nobody is free from big race nerves, but some people are able to master them, while others are paralysed. Part of this is due to experience. The sheer size and novelty of a big Games meeting can flood the personality with a mixture of new impressions and strange emotions so that it is difficult to concentrate on the job in hand, but these emotions diminish with experience. Being in Rome, being in the Olympic stadium, finding yourself as British Number One, may in time become routine situations. The central problem, though, remains: the fear of putting yourself under maximum pressure or, rather, the fear of failing when under maximum pressure. No one performs well unless they are nervous. It is the high state of arousal brought on by the big occasion which produces the great performance, but we are all familiar with the anxiety-arousal curve, where over-anxiety depresses performance. David Hemery, the former Olympic gold medalist and a master of the mental game, has a technique for dealing with this. He says: 'What is the worst thing that you can imagine? How likely is that to happen?' and then asks, 'What would happen then?' and 'What would you feel about it?' When put like this, athletes realise that even a championship race is just another race, not the end of the world nor the end of their career. If you lead the athlete through his past career, it is usually one of success, and reasons can be found for the failures. He will realise that 'cracking up' is very unlikely, and that there is always another race. People remember the races you win, not the ones you lost. Seb Coe is remembered as the man who won two Olympic titles at 1500m but how many, apart from Steve Cram, remember that he did not take part in the 1983 Championships? The best ways of coping with this pre-race worry are: 1. Follow a routine which has been used before in the last few days. One should not make a fetish of needing to have exactly the same meals or wearing the same pair of socks, but a pattern of training, eating and sleeping which you know will get you on to the starting line fresh and rested. 2. In the last few hours, when you are tempted to worry about what other people are doing, think about the good training you have done, think about your best races, and visualise the race itself. Think through different scenarios and picture yourself winning in each one. 3. In the race itself, focus on your own performance, monitoring your tiredness and trying to run as efficiently as possible, moving into the right position as the pace changes. Try to carry out your race plans, however bad you feel, because the chances are the others are feeling just as bad. Whatever you do, you must come out of the race feeling that you have put everything into it. That way you will have no regrets.

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11. The Majestic Self-confidence of Jonny Wilkinson:

How expectations can make or break your performance - Lee Crust
The image of Jonny Wilkinson majestically kicking his way into the history books during last Novembers Rugby World Cup final will live long in the memories of English rugby fans. The decisive drop-goal, scored with just seconds of extra time remaining, demonstrated not just immense skill but the confidence of a winner. It is easy to forget that Wilkinson had failed with three previous attempted drop-goals up to this point in the match. These failures might have dented the confidence of a player with a more brittle temperament, resulting in more tentative and indecisive future actions. But in an interview following the final whistle Wilkinson revealed that, having missed the previous three attempts, he felt he was going to make the fourth one count. The rest, as they say, is history. This one example encapsulates the importance of confidence and self-belief to the sports performer. Of course, having high levels of self-confidence is no guarantee of success and will not compensate for lack of skill, but in situations where competitors are evenly matched it can be the crucial determinant. In research, confidence has been shown to consistently distinguish between highly successful and less successful athletes. Although many people mistakenly assume that confidence reflects performance ie we become confident once we have performed consistently well it is becoming increasingly evident that confidence can be established beforehand. Sport psychologists define self-confidence as the belief that you can successfully perform a desired behaviour. Confident athletes expect success and have a high level of self-belief that appears crucial in determining how far they strive towards their goals. It is largely confidence that determines whether people give up or remain committed to their goals following a series of setbacks. For the sake of simplicity, we may consider self-confidence as conceptually opposite to cognitive anxiety (negative beliefs and performance worries). Both are related to our beliefs and both, ultimately, influence our performance. Coaches can often see fluctuations in the balance between these two opposing states reflected in the behaviour of their athletes. While confident athletes are not afraid of making mistakes, often taking calculated risks in order to take charge of a situation, self-doubters often avoid responsibility, becoming over-conservative and paralysed by fear of failure. Think of the football striker who has not scored for a number of successive matches and is riddled with self-doubt. When presented with a half-chance which would usually result in a snap-shot, he may elect to avoid responsibility and pass to a team mate. According to psychologist Albert Bandura, performers situational-specific confidence, or self-efficacy, is based on four primary sources of information, represented graphically in Figure 1 below. The first and most important factor is past performance accomplishments. What we have achieved in training and competition forms the basis of future expectations of success or failure. Repeated success naturally leads to positive expectations of further success, higher motivation and enhanced self-belief.

Unfortunately, the flip side of this principle is that repeated failures can give rise to a downward performance spiral and a snowball effect whereby a performer starts to believe that success is unattainable. Of course, such an athlete does not mysteriously lose his or her physical skills and talents, but without confidence in these abilities high-level performance is rarely achieved. The implication of Banduras work for coaches is that it is vital for them to make sure their athletes achieve success, even if this means renegotiating overly ambitious goals. The athletes perceptions are of overriding importance. Research has suggested that athletes can also gain confidence from viewing the successful performances of others at a similar level. This second source of information is known as modelling or vicarious experience. For example, a tennis player lacking confidence in her volleying might find it useful to have a peer who has overcome similar difficulties demonstrate the skill. By viewing others, we begin to see that, with effort, success is attainable. The very common use of celebrities in fitness videos is an example of modelling.

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A third way for coaches to help build confidence is through verbal persuasion. By means of careful reasoning, athletes can be shown that other people (ie the coach) have confidence in their abilities and believe they can achieve set goals. Coaches may even use deception to persuade their athletes that goals can be achieved of which more later. Verbal persuasion can also take the form of self-talk, whereby the athlete convinces himself that success will follow. Finally, Bandura suggest that emotional arousal can influence confidence. Although this is the least influential factor, it is important that physiological symptoms are perceived positively rather than negatively. Confidence can be enhanced by perceiving increases in heart and respiration rate as the bodys natural preparation for top performance rather than as triggers for anxiety. Clearly, confidence is enhanced by good preparation, planning and a sense of optimism. Conversely, negative thinking and pessimism can undermine performance and limit progress. By expecting failure, we set our belief system to a negative channel and start favouring information that is consistent with these beliefs. During a training session we may have done some things well and struggled with others. When we have a negative mind-set we tend to focus only on the things that went badly, leading to what psychologists call negative self-fulfilling prophecies and psychological barriers. The four-minute mile was the classic example of a psychological barrier; runners were consistently achieving times of 4:03, 4:02 and 4:01, but no one could apparently run under four minutes. This led to a common perception that running a mile in less than four minutes was physically impossible. Remarkably, though, within 18 months of Roger Bannisters famous breakthrough 16 other athletes had managed the feat. Did these athletes suddenly get faster and train harder? No: the floodgates opened because Bannister had breached the psychological barrier and demonstrated what was possible, so athletes were no longer limited by their beliefs.

The power of hypnosis how thoughts can spur you on or hold you back
Often we are capable of far more than we do, but we restrict ourselves by our beliefs. Can you identify any thoughts that are holding you back? Hypnotists work with this system by planting beliefs in our minds which our bodies will automatically follow. In one study, hypnotised participants were unable to lift a pen after being told it was too heavy to be lifted. Clearly they were physically capable of lifting the pen but for some reason were unable to perform the task. Psychologists studying electrical activity in their biceps and triceps found that the participants were unconsciously contracting their triceps muscles and working against the biceps to restrict movement. It appears that there is a strong unconscious drive for our bodies to react consistently with our beliefs. The question most interesting to sport psychologists is whether beliefs can be positively manipulated to enhance performance. The fact that expectations influence performance has been demonstrated in controlled experiments and case studies. In medical settings, giving patients a sugar pill (placebo) and telling them it is morphine has been found, in some cases, to produce as much pain relief as the real thing. Deception has been used in similar ways in sporting studies. In one, 24 participants had their arms strength-tested and were then asked to arm-wrestle an opponent. Before each match, the researchers deceived both participants into believing that the objectively weaker participant was actually the stronger and in 10 out of 12 contests, the weakest link actually won! Clearly, the outcomes were not predicted by physical strength but by belief. Similar results were obtained from three experiments that manipulated the beliefs of weight-lifters (6,7,8). In each study, researchers first ascertained participants one repetition-maximum (1RM) for the bench press. After a rest period, the participants performed further lifts when they were deceived into thinking the weights were either heavier or lighter than they actually were. Remarkably, in all three studies participants lifted more weight when they thought they were lifting less. Deception allowed the participants to improve their 1RMs an effect that was probably due to their (false) belief that they had already lifted the weight in question. Although deception appeared less effective with experienced weight-lifters, performance increases were still noted. Another interesting study showed that expectations could influence perceptions of effort . Forty female participants performed a cycle ride at 80% of their maximum oxygen consumption after viewing one of two videos depicting similar others performing the task. One depicted the task as strenuous but involved a woman who was coping; the other showed a woman who was clearly finding the task difficult and distressing. Participants who viewed the distressed subject gave significantly higher ratings of perceived exertion (RPE) during the ensuing ride. It is likely that viewing the distressing images made these participants expect the task to be harder and selectively attend to physiological cues (ie fatigue) that were consistent with these beliefs. So how can coaches and athletes use this information to expect success and build confidence? I am not suggesting that coaches should deceive their athletes in pursuit of this goal, as this can backfire and damage trust, but Banduras model (see Figure 1) does provide many other answers to this question. Nothing breeds confidence like success (performance accomplishments), so

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coaches must nurture their athletes by ensuring success in training and competition, which in some cases may mean redefining success or making it more achievable. Success can be defined in two ways: in relation to others or in relation to an athletes own past performance. If a marathon runner, for example, measures success only in terms of objective outcome, coming third may be perceived as failure and so damage confidence. But if the same runner measures success in relation to his own performance and notes that his finish time was over a minute faster than his PB, the perception is quite different. Athletes have more control over performance goals than outcome goals. During training, coaches may need to work with their athletes on perceived weaknesses. To ensure success and build confidence they might simplify the skill or skills in question. Think about a person who decides she cannot do press-ups after a negative circuit training experience. To build confidence, the instructor may show the participant a simpler form of the activity (eg pressups on knees) and allow strength (and success) to be built up over the next few weeks. As the athlete gains confidence, the instructor can work towards introducing the full press-up into the circuit. As a series of goals are steadily accomplished, performance and confidence are built. Simulated practice conditions can also be used to boost confidence by exposing the participant to performance conditions. In this way an athlete can develop confidence from the knowledge that he has overcome problems in practice. Mental preparation via competitive situation imagery is a particularly useful technique. It is vital for athletes to know that their coaches believe in them. Although coaching often involves correcting mistakes and giving constructive criticism, it is important to give positive feedback and praise where appropriate in order to create a positive pre-competition environment. Confidence does not always mean you will perform at your best, but it certainly increases the likelihood of reaching your potential. Remember that confidence can be nurtured. Outstanding performers like Jonny Wilkinson are not simply born with confidence; they develop it through hard work and effective training. The start point is challenging yourself to think confidently. If you believe you can win, you become a very difficult person to beat.

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12. Goal setting: One step at a time: How to raise your game through effective goal-setting - Lee
Crust Anyone interested in athletics will be aware of the achievements of the US 200m and 400m sprinter Michael Johnson. In the course of a spectacular career, Johnson rewrote the record books when he became the only man ever to win both 200m and 400m Olympic gold medals, at the 1996 Olympics. At times he was, quite literally, in a class of his own. However, according to the man himself, his achievements were based not purely on talent but on hard physical conditioning, mental strength, a clear vision of where he wanted to go, and a plan of how to get there. Michael Johnsons book Slaying the Dragon is not just a record of his achievements but an insight into how one man mobilised his extraordinary talent through effective goal-setting. Not everyone has the talent to be a Michael Johnson, but anyone can achieve significant improvements in performance by means of effective goal-setting. Many people associate goal-setting with new year resolutions, and are quick to dismiss goal-setting as ineffective, since most well-intentioned, if vague, resolutions have failed before the end of January. Lets get one thing clear straight away: most such resolutions are perfect examples of how not to set goals! Research on goal-setting in the worlds of business and in sport and exercise has consistently shown that it can lead to enhanced performance. In fact, a recent meta-analysis (statistical technique used to evaluate the data from a whole series of experiments) showed that goal-setting led to performance enhancement in 78% of sport and exercise research studies, with moderate to strong effects. Goal-setting is a powerful technique that appears to work by providing a direction for our efforts, focusing our attention, promoting persistence and increasing our confidence (providing we achieve the goals we set ourselves). But, while goal-setting is an easy concept to understand, its application needs more thought and planning than most people realise. One of the main problems is that not all coaches are aware of the principles of goal-setting and how to apply them effectively. So a key purpose of this article is to give coaches and athletes a better understanding of how to use goal-setting to enhance performance and avoid disappointments. Its always good to have a vision of what you want to achieve whether this is related to fitness, weight loss, winning an Olympic medal or achieving a set standard of performance; but you also need a plan for how you are going to attain this goal. Dream goals inspire us and give us a target to aim for, but in order to deliver the goods they must be specific and realistic. Most new year resolutions are dream goals that will never be realised because people fail to plan realistically the day-to-day process required to make such dreams into reality. If you only focus on your dream goal, you can easily become overwhelmed when you think about what its going to take to achieve it. Research suggests that focusing only on long-term dream goals does not lead to enhanced performances.

Short-term goals the key to success

Top athletes like Michael Johnson and Steve Backley have understood that, although dream goals such as Olympic gold medals are important in helping to direct our efforts, it is the day- to-day short-term goals that provide the key to success. I like to classify goals into three types: 1. Dream goals are the ones that seem a long way off and difficult to achieve. In time terms, they may be anything from six months to several years away; 2. Intermediate goals are markers of where you want to be at a specific time. For example, if your dream goal was to lower your 400m PB by one second over 10 months, an intermediate goal could be a half second improvement after five months; 3. Short-term or daily goals are the most important because they provide a focus for our training in each and every session. Past research on Olympic athletes found that setting daily training goals was one factor that distinguished successful performers from their less successful counterparts. For every week and each training session you should decide what you need to do in order to take another small step towards the next intermediate goal, and ultimately towards your dream goal. Dont just set goals for competition: we all spend more time practising and training, so set targets for these periods too. 23

Breaking down the impossible task

To demonstrate how goal-setting and goal-achievement can aid performance, let me describe my experiences of learning to ski. Having spent some time on the nursery slopes learning the snow-plough turn and other basic moves, I and the rest of my group were both excited and apprehensive when the instructor announced it was time to make our way up to the higher slopes and ski all the way down. To a novice skier, this moment presents a real challenge to confidence. En masse, my group decided that we couldnt do it: we were not ready to ski all the way down; after all it was a long and difficult slope for novices to ski! Our instructor then did a very clever thing by distracting our focus from the apparently impossible task of skiing all the way down and breaking the task down into a series of smaller stages. We didnt feel confident enough to ski to the bottom, but could we ski to that tree 50m away to the left? Yes, we agreed and off we went, following the instructor. On reaching the tree, the instructor picked a new target, and these small stages eventually led us all the way to the bottom. The next attempt involved fewer targets with increased distance between each target. In this way, our main objective of skiing continuously all the way down, which at first seemed impossible, became easily attainable. Focusing on one small step at a time and achieving that goal developed confidence, and confidence allowed us to move on to more challenging targets. This simple story encapsulates the need for short-term goals to direct our immediate focus. According to sport psychologist Terry Orlick, there are four prerequisites for successful goal-setting. First, you need to decide what you want develop a vision; secondly, you must be committed, so your goals must be worth striving for; thirdly, you have to believe that the goals you set are achievable. Goals that are too easy to achieve provide little motivation; but, on the other hand, unrealistically difficult goals can lead to loss of confidence and eventual rejection of the goal. To avoid these kinds of problems, coaches and athletes should work together to reach an agreement on goals and should not be afraid of adjusting goals to optimise their potential effect. The fourth pre-requisite for successful goal-setting specified by Orlick is to focus on one step at a time. In beginning the process of setting goals, its important to be specific and realistic about what you are striving to achieve. Ditch such vague goals as, to get fit or to do my best for more objective alternatives. Objective goals allow the sports performer and his/her coach to measure progress and re-evaluate the goal if targets prove either too difficult or too easy. The types of goals set in sport and exercise typically reflect what psychologists have identified as outcome, performance and process goals. All three are valuable in guiding athletes towards higher standards of performance, although you need an awareness of some of the potential pitfalls with these goals. I will use the example of a 100m sprinter to demonstrate the differences between these three types of goal. If the coach and athlete agree a goal of winning a medal at the European Indoor Championships, this is an outcome goal. Outcome goals tend to focus on an objective competitive result, such as winning a medal or beating an opponent, but they can never be completely under your control since the ability and form of your opponents on the day can influence the result. You might even run a PB but still fail to achieve your specific goal and so damage your confidence. Outcome goals can provide motivation, but focusing purely on the result can lead to increased anxiety.

Performance goals are more flexible

Alternatively you could set a performance goal, such as running under 10.5 seconds for the 100m, whose achievement is independent of other athletes. As such goals are set in the context of comparisons with your own previous performances, they tend to be more flexible and within your control. In the event of injury, performance goals can be easily readjusted to provide meaningful and realistic targets. Process goals are to do with the actions or techniques that are required to achieve success. A sprinter who has a tendency to become overly concerned with the position of his/her competitors during the final 20m of races might set a process goal of focusing on a point beyond the finish line to ensure focus is retained until the line has been crossed. Coaches have a preference for performance and process goals, since these can be more easily and precisely adjusted than outcome goals, although all three types of goal should be used as appropriate to the athlete and situation. One recent study found better results when using a combination of goal strategies (outcome, performance and process goals) than either one alone.

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In the planning stages of a goal-setting programme, you should think carefully about factors that may hinder your progress. For example, most people set goals that are too difficult rather than too easy, which commonly leads to the rejection of those goals. Once rejected, the goals no longer direct our efforts or our focus. It is also important to avoid setting too many goals. Instead, focus on one dream goal, perhaps two or three intermediate targets and two short-term goals for todays session. Thats enough to start with, but be sure to give your short-term goals the highest priority. Through achieving these you will naturally progress towards the intermediate targets. I recently set myself a goal of reducing my resting heart-rate from 75 to 65 bpm. In order to achieve this, I decided to chose an exercise mode that I enjoy (jogging) and to exercise three times per week over the next six months. As my fitness increases and my resting heart rate becomes lower, I will adjust the frequency, intensity and duration of training to suit my needs. However, I initially identified one major barrier to the achievement of my goal time. My work schedule means that I have little time to spare during the day, while in the evening I often feel tired and want to relax. Because I value my fitness goal, the way around this problem has been to get up early on two days a week and to run before my working day starts. At the weekend I am more flexible and can make time for exercise during the day. The point is clear: you must consider potential barriers to your goals and plan around them if possible. If you can see no way around your barriers, your targets may be unrealistic. You should always evaluate your goals, and charting your progress can be an effective way to do this and to boost your confidence and motivation as you see progress being made. Goal-setting is a smart move for athletes who want to develop their self-confidence, increase their levels of motivation and achieve higher standards of performance. Remember that time spent in preparation is worth it and can prevent disappointments. Take the advice of athletes like Michael Johnson and use goal-setting to change small steps into great feats. To help remember the key principles of goal-setting you need to think SMARTER. That is, your goals should be: Specific - Indicate precisely what is to be done. Avoid vague alternatives; Measurable - You should be able to quantify your goal; Accepted - Goals must be accepted as worthwhile, realistic and attainable; Recorded - Write your goals down. This is the basis of a contract with yourself; Time-constrained - Set specific time-limits; Evaluated - Monitor your progress regularly; Reversible - In the event of injury, or failure to achieve over-difficult goals, reset your goals accordingly.

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