Intangibles Archives - Page 3 of 7

The Warrior vs Winner Culture

This article was provided by Coaches Network

Too much emphasis on winning can distract from the true value of sports. Longtime soccer coach and internationally known speaker Reed Maltbie explains why it’s important to develop what he calls a “warrior” culture as opposed to a winning culture.

Coaches can often become blinded by the desire to win. This single-minded focus forces people to sacrifice their values and can hurt the growth of young athletes. But as Maltbie explains in an article on Changingthegameproject.com, the goal should be to achieve excellence. Winning is just a by-product of this commitment to positive values and embracing the challenge of competition.

“In a values-based, purpose-driven team or mindset winning is not the focus, but the expectedly pleasant by-product. It is not ‘wanted’ as the main desire but simply expected as something that may happen if things are done right,” Maltbie writes. “Winning and losing are both mere waypoints on the journey and both should be viewed with the same desire to learn from and grow from them.”

Like many coaches, Maltbie struggled with this approach when he started out over 20 years ago. He had winning mentality and all he cared about was acquiring as many trophies and accolades as possible, often bragging about not having a losing season as a major part of his success. But after seeing the way that this mentality left him feeling empty and took away from the experience of his players, he began to change his approach.

What he discovered was this: “All warriors are winners, but not all winners are warriors. The simple commitment to personal excellence, high standards, and an ethereal quest to be better than the day before makes a warrior a winner.”

With this mentality he stopped treating winning as the ultimate goal and started treating it as a simple step on the path to excellence. Since then his goal has been to help athletes develop into “warriors.” He does this by encouraging athletes to live by unbending values, strive for improvement every day, take challenges head on, and respect the nature of competition.

Here is his guide for changing your focus from winning trophies to striving for excellence:

• “Warriors are purpose-driven WHILE winners are trophy-drive.” Winning a competition is a fleeting moment. What lasts longer is developing the desire and drive to always do your best and to seek excellence everyday. This motivation goes far beyond the pursuit of a piece of metal.

• “Warriors are internally motivated WHILE winners are externally motivated.” When you focus on being the master of yourself, true excellence can be achieved. Competing for the sake of winning is an external motivation that relies on comparing yourself to others rather than seeking self-improvement.

• “Warriors have a growth mindset WHILE winners have a fixed mindset.” People focused solely on winning often think they are entitled to the trophy, while those with a growth mindset understand how much work it takes to get there. Even when the competition doesn’t go your way, the value lies in the opportunity to learn and grow.

• “Warriors are process-oriented WHILE winners are outcome-oriented.” Instead of worrying about the endgame, stay in the moment and enjoy the journey. When you always have your eye on the goal, it can be easy to miss what’s going on around you.

• “Warriors are values-based WHILE winners are glory-based.” It’s important to develop the values that you want to fight for and then to instill these values in your athletes. When acquiring trophies is the focus, you are looking to boost your own ego rather than create a legacy of excellence.

“We have a chance to teach our children and our athletes the awesome joy of being a warrior. Of seeking challenge, battling for personal excellence, of striving to be a better person each day, and living and playing with a purpose and embedded in values,” Maltbie writes. “They have the opportunity to experience deep satisfaction in mastering the game, enjoying the journey, and being part of something bigger than themselves. We make this choice to create warriors not winners and we may not fill our mantle with trophies, but we will fill the world with happy, resilient, purposeful people who will make an impact beyond the game.”

Click here to read the full article.

Penalty Kicks: Myth vs Fact

This article was provided by InnerDrive a mental skills training company

Forty years ago, at Euro 1976, we saw the first major international tournament decided by penalties. Czechoslovakia beat Germany 5-3 with one of the most famous penalties ever seen (‘the Panenka’ chip down the middle). Before then, drawn matches were often decided by coin tosses or the drawing of straws. Given this curious origin, it is no wonder that penalty shoot outs have intrigued football fans.

Many theories exist as to what does and doesn’t work. Should you trust left footers to take a penalty? Do experienced players perform better than young ones? Does a goalkeepers antics affect their opponent? This blog looks at 10 penalty taking beliefs and distinguishes between myth and fact.

1. SOME COUNTRIES ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS

A quick look at the success-rates of the major nations at Euro 2016 suggests that some teams are much better at penalties than others. Belgium have the best record (winning 100% of penalty shoot-outs), followed by Germany (71%), France (50%) Italy and Spain (both 33%) and finally England (17%).

However, what actually matters most isn’t your country’s record in all penalty shoot-outs ever, just the last two. This is bad news for Belgium fans whose impressive record actually masks that they have only been in one penalty shoot out in the World Cup 1986. Researchers have found that if your team has lost their last two penalty shoot-outs they only have a 57% chance of winning the next one. If they have won the last two penalty shoot-outs then this number jumps to 89%.

This is good news for Germany and Spain (who have won their last 2 and 3 penalty shoot-outs respectively) and bad news for England who have lost their last three (Euro ‘96, World Cup ’98 and World Cup ’06).

Verdict: Fact

2. DON’T TRUST LEFT FOOTERS

At first glance, the stats seem to suggest that there is not much difference in how successful left-footed players are at taking penalties (73% success rate) compared to right-footed players (76%). However, researchers have noted that if you just look at penalty shoot-outs from the last twenty years, the success rate for left-footers drops to 58% (success rate for right-footed players has remained over 70%).

It is hard to say exactly why this may be the case (it could be down to better scouting or because goalkeepers are getting better at reading left footed players). Either way, the message is clear; don’t trust left-footers to take your penalties.

Verdict: Was a Myth, is Now a Fact

3. IF IN DOUBT, HIT THE PENALTY AS HARD AS POSSIBLE

In an investigation on power v placement, researchers analysed 129 penalties that were taken during World Cup Finals and in the finals of the UEFA Champions League. They found the following data for how hard you hit your penalty:

Power of Shot	Scored	Missed Target	Saved
50%	47%	0%	53%
75%	81%	1%	18%
100%	63%	31%	7%

The most successful type of penalty was one that was hit at 75% of maximum power. It suggests that a combination of power and placement is best. However, what to do if in doubt? If you hit it softly, it increases the chance of hitting the target, but also dramatically increases the likelihood of the goalkeeper saving it (resulting in scoring 47% of the time).

If you hit it with 100% power, you are more likely to miss the target, but the chance of the goalkeeper saving it if it is on target is very small (resulting in scoring 63% of the time). So if in doubt, hit the penalty with maximum power.

Verdict: Fact

4.GOALKEEPERS CAN DISTRACT PENALTY TAKERS

Do the antics of the goalkeeper before a penalty shoot-out affect how likely it is that the opposition player will score? When Dutch goalkeeper Tim Krul successfully came off the bench one minute before a penalty shoot-out in the World Cup Quarter Final against Costa Rica in 2014, he was very confident that he could out psych his opponents. He said, “I tried to get in the minds…I told the players I knew where they were going to shoot to make them a bit nervous”.

Research suggests that goalkeepers can in fact out psych their opponents, by doing one of two things. The first thing is to spread out and make themselves look as big as possible before the penalty is taken. This makes the opponent falsely believe that the goalkeeper is bigger than he actually is, and that the goal is smaller. This strategy, utilises the Muller-Lyer illusion, which alters peoples ability to accurately judge the width of an object (as seen in the graphic below)

The bottom line looks longer than the higher one, despite them being the same length. Goalkeepers can perform a similar illusion by making themselves look taller and wider by adopting an extended H or X shape by spreading their arms above their head.

The second thing to do is to stand 6-10 cm off centre of the goal (i.e. marginally to the left or the right). This makes one side of the goal 2.9% wider than the other. This tiny difference results in the penalty taker aiming for the slightly larger side almost 60% of the time. Knowing which direction your opponent is more likely to shoot can be used as a key advantage for goalkeepers.

Verdict: Fact

5. BETTER TEAMS ARE BETTER AT PENALTIES

How does an underdog that scrapes a draw and gets to a penalty shoot-out with a team who is ranked much higher than them fare? It turns out to be very well. Teams such as Czech Republic and Denmark have a great overall success rate for penalties (Czech Republic players have scored 20 out of 20 penalties, with Danish players scoring 9 out of their 10 penalties in major tournaments). These stats are far better than players from France, Italy, Spain and England.

Psychologists say that one possible explanation for this is that players from the major nations have a higher status in the game (as measured in Champions League appearances and individual honours). Therefore the pressure on them to succeed causes an ‘ego-threat’, which is where they realise that they have more to lose if they miss. This seems to be confirmed by players from these teams rushing their penalties (English and Spanish players are the most guilty of this)

Verdict: Myth

6. DON’T TRUST YOUR YOUNGEST PLAYERS TO TAKE PENALTIES

If you had to choose one player to take a penalty for you, would you choose your current star or your young prodigious player? Most managers, fans and pundits would go for the current star. Eager to find out if this was the correct strategy, researchers divided players into two categories; ‘Current stars’ and ‘Future stars’.

Current stars were those who had already won World/UEFA/South American Player of The Year or Top Goal-scorers in their leagues or at major tournaments. ‘Future Stars’ were defined as players who would go on to win these awards later in their careers.

They found that “current stars” scored on average, 65% of the time from the penalty spot. “Future stars”, scored 89% of the time. This difference was explained in a similar way to why underdog teams outperform better teams. The better the player, the more they worried about what failing would mean to their status. Whereas younger players see the penalties as a stage for which they can make a name for themselves, and subsequently perform better.

Verdict: Myth

7. RIGHT FOOTED PREFER TO HIT IT TO THE LEFT, LEFT FOOTED PLAYERS TO THE RIGHT

Do players have a natural side to aim their penalty kick at? It seems so. For right-footed players, it would be more natural to aim for the left corner (from the kicker’s perspective). The reverse is true for left-footed players. In a study of almost one thousand penalties from the Bundesliga over 12 years, players chose to hit the penalty to their natural side 44% of the time, in the centre 15% and to their non-natural side 41% of the time.

This difference is so marginal, it probably isn’t significant enough to say that right footed players prefer to hit it to the left and left footed players prefer to hit it to the right.

Verdict: Mainly Myth with a Slither of Fact

8. THE PREVIOUS PENALTY AFFECTS WHERE THE NEXT ONE IS GOING

You are a goalkeeper in a penalty shoot-out. The last three penalties have been scored in the bottom left hand corner. The next player is about to take their penalty – where do you dive? If you decided to dive to the right, thinking that after three penalties in a row to the left this next one will surely go to the right, you are in good company (70% of goalkeepers at World Cups and Euro Championships do the same). However, you would all be wrong.

This decision making is known as ‘the gamblers fallacy’. This is where you think previous events must even out at the next one. It is like thinking that after three reds at the roulette table, the next spin must be black. The truth is, each spin is independent. This is relatively true for penalties too. The author of this research states that ‘complete randomness is generally the best strategy in competitive games’ as this removes the gamblers fallacy.

Verdict: Myth

9. A STRAIGHT RUN-UP TO A PENALTY IS BAD

Is it better to have a straight run-up like Thomas Muller or come in at an angle like Eden Hazard

The answer is that it doesn’t make much of a difference. The wider the angle of the run up allow greater pelvic rotation. This increase of motion, in theory, allows players to make better contact with the ball. However, attempts to alter the angle of the run-up to players who typically have a straight run up does not help them improve the power or accuracy of their shots.

This is probably because it feels forced and un-natural. When it comes to penalties (and indeed any skill under pressure), it is best to stick to what you know and what you feel comfortable with.

Verdict: Myth

10. HAVE YOUR BEST PLAYERS TAKE THE FIRST PENALTY

In 2006, England lost in the quarter finals of the World Cup to Portugal on penalties. Cristiano Ronaldo confidently stepped up and scored Portugal’s 5^th penalty. Unfortunately, it was a different story for him in the Euro 2012 semi-finals, when Spain eliminated Portugal. Ronaldo was again due to take the fifth penalty but didn’t get the chance as Portugal lost before his turn. So when is the best time for your best player to take a penalty?

Evidence suggest that you should put your best penalty taker in 4^th or 5^th position and the second best penalty taker either 3^rd or 4^th. This is because these are the penalties that will have to be scored in order to win or avoid losing the match. We think the risk of the match being over before they get a chance to take it is significant, so 4^th is probably better than 5^th.What about your weakest of your 5 penalty takers? It would make sense for him to go first or second, as this is the time in the contest where there is the least pressure.

FINAL THOUGHT

So hopefully that has helped sort the myths from the facts. You shouldnt trust left footers. Experienced stars do worse than their young rivals. Goalkeepers can put-off their opponents.

Creating Decision-Makers

This article was provided by Coaches Network

While there is no question that athletes must have knowledge of their sport, speed, and power to be successful, another characteristic is rising to the forefront that can make all the difference during game play: the ability to make swift decisions. In a single game, athletes will be faced with a myriad of split second decisions. What the players do in practice will either strengthen or weaken their ability to make the right choice.

Spanish soccer player and playmaker Andres Iniesta said, “Speed of thought and speed of decision making separates the best players in the world from the rest.” Coaches are the frontline in creating players who are quick thinkers and making sure their decision-making skills are constantly growing and improving.

But how can you make sure that developing these skills are front and center in your coaching strategy? In a blog for the website Coach Logic, women’s soccer coach Gary Curneen discusses the attributes needed for a strong decision-maker and how coaches can help athletes reach their full potential on the field.

According to Curneen, there are six key elements that athletes must master in order to make intelligent decisions. These include having a high skill level in their sport, an understanding of timing and positioning in relation to other players and the field, being able to communicate with their teammates and focus on the play at hand, and having conditioned responses to situations that might arise during a game. In his blog, Curneen lays out multiple steps that can help coaches build these attributes in their players.

First of all, Curneen suggests keeping practice up-tempo and varied. If a player is facing the same obstacles and running the same plays every practice, they will be less likely to make the right decisions when it comes to the high intensity of game time. Changing up practice will make players more comfortable with shifting situations and give them a chance to learn the right responses to different circumstances that can occur in a game. This will build their confidence in knowing how to react to almost anything.

Coaches can also add a competitive aspect to their practice drills. According to Curneen, decisions become more imperative to athletes when something is at stake. They will feel the pressure to not only make a decision, but one that will best help them succeed. This is the same type of pressure that they will feel in a game, and in doing this coaches can help condition athletes to automatically react in the right way when faced with multiple options.

Another suggestion from Curneen is to create “controlled chaos,” in which the entire team is challenged to solve a problem. Doing this enforces the idea that players need to communicate and know their surroundings at all times, even when things seem out of hand. And while each player’s individual ability to make the right decision is important, if they are not also thinking of the good of the team, then there is a higher chance of negative outcome. Curneen suggests giving players different roles and responsibilities to help them work together in solving the little problems at practice, which will lead to being able to solve bigger ones during game time.

Jose Mourinho, manager of Premier League Club Manchester United, uses accountability to strengthen teamwork among his players. “Jose Mourinho has handed team talks over to players in an attempt to get his team to take ownership of their performance because if a team decides to take responsibility, the rewards are huge,” writes Curneen. “The culture becomes player-driven, concentration levels rise dramatically and communication on the field drives every single player towards getting the desired result.”

One last element in teaching players to make the right decisions on the field is helping them to make the right ones in everyday situations. Having regular conversations with players about life outside of sport can keep a coach aware of any destructive habits or relationships that might weigh the player down. If an athlete is acting in a way that hurts them mentally, emotionally, or physically, no amount of training will be able to help them work to their full potential on the field.

According to Curneen, coaches can serve as a critical juncture for athletes, making sure that their relationships and actions are working towards their greatest success. “Each player knows the difference between right and wrong, but few know the difference between good and great,” he writes.

Click here to read the full article.

Parents and Young Athletes

This article was provided by InnerDrive, a mental skills training company

The following article is focused on sports psychology for parents. The information can be used by coaches to help them in dealing with their athletes and could also be shared with the parents of their athletes. Unfortunately, many times coaches must also coach the parents in order to help the athlete. Here are some ideas from experts.

What is the secret to parenting children involved in sport? Following years and years of scientific research examining which parental strategies are most likely to help children thrive when it comes to their sporting endeavours, we are now have more ideas about how parents can optimise their involvement in their children’s sport.

A recent survey found that 45% of children said that bad parental behaviour made them not want to take part in sport. The car journey home after a match is just one situation where a misspoken word can be magnified resulting in hours of stress, tears and frustration.

But parenting a youth athlete is much more than just what to say post-competition. Psychologist Dr Chris Harwood and Dr Camilla Knight have researched sporting parent expertise, what youth athletes want from their parents and optimising parental impact. They were kind enough to chat to us about their work and we have summarised the top 8 tips that we think all parents should know to better help and support their children.

SPORT PSYCHOLOGY FOR PARENTS

Develop goals with your children for their sport. Central to this is to have regular and consistent communication about what they want to achieve and what you hope they will achieve. The more congruent that these aims are the better. Setting goals is notoriously difficult, with them sometimes becoming an anchor dragging you down instead of a platform to build off. For more tips on how to master this, check out our blog, ‘How To Do Goal Setting Right’.

Create a supportive environment in which your child feels that you understand them and their sporting involvement. Parents can play a key role in reducing the fear of failure their child feels, with ‘Shame and Embarrassment’ being the number one worry that youth athletes think will follow a failure.

Talk to your child about what they would like you to do at training and competitions. After all, this is about them and not you. When it comes to youth sport, many parents fall in to the trap of talking more then they listen.

Be there to support and guide your child, but limit conversation about outcomes and expectations. Research from educational psychology has demonstrated that having high expectations can help improve performances, but only if they are accurate and accompanied with high levels of support. How parents communicate and react after a setback has been found to be a significant predictor of their child’s mindset.

Dr Knight’s research has shown that children want their parents to be involved in a supporting manner, rather than give technical or tactical advice. Furthermore, they appreciate when parents provide ‘common sense’ advice (i.e. on effort, attitude and practical aspects) rather than performance related advice.

Develop positive relationships with your child’s coach. The more that you can work with them and not against them, the better. Coaching is a tough gig – the more supportive and positive the relationship between parents and coaches then the more everyone benefits.

Socialize with other parents and create wider support network for you and your child. Being a parent whose children are heavily involved in sport can be a lonely place. By actively creating a wider support network for both you and your child, it makes the experience a more enjoyable. As 17^th Century poet John Donne remarked, “no man is an island”.

Recognise what you find challenging about your child’s sport and develop strategies to manage to emotions. Dr Harwood and Dr Knight have found that parent’s ability to manage the emotional demands of competition will impact upon the child’s personal enjoyment and quality of experience. This emotional control allows parents to provide better support and feedback to their children.

Model healthy attitudes towards sport and physical activity. How a parent views the importance of education has been found to be a strong predictor of their child’s grades. Likewise, within sport, parents are often the primary source for how their young children view their participation.

All too often an emphasis is on becoming ‘elite’. This leads to over-coaching, excess pressure and focusing too early on just one sport in attempt to clock up as many hours as possible. The paradox here is that research suggests that if young children focus on just one sport (instead of sampling and enjoying many) they are actually less likely to reach the highest levels.

Maximize Training

This article was provided by InnerDrive, a mental skills training company.

8 WAYS TO MAXIMIZE TRAINING

Why do some athletes improve at a faster rate than others? The answer it seems may (partly) lie in how they train. Researchers have been exploring the psychology of practice to explore what helps athletes develop quicker.

Psychologists use the phrase ‘Deliberate Practice’ to describe the type of training that yields the best results. It is defined as ‘engagement in structured activities created specifically to improve performance’. When it comes to training, it’s not just how much you do, but what you do and how well you do it that really counts.

HOW IMPORTANT IS DELIBERATE PRACTICE?

How much difference does engaging in deliberate practice make? Some have claimed it makes all the difference (i.e. the person who practices will be the best). These people would be wrong. After reading Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, Dan McLaughlin quit his job as a photographer to start clocking up his 10,000 hours of deliberate practice in golf with the aim of becoming a golfing champion.

So what does the research actually say about the impact of deliberate practice? The most comprehensive and thorough review of the research on deliberate practice, which included almost 90 studies and over 11,000 participants, found that it accounted for 18% variance in sporting performance.

This is no small number. 18% variation is a big amount. But not the 100% Dan McLaughlin is hoping for. The researchers conclude that ‘deliberate practice is important, but not as important as has been argued’.

Much of this misunderstanding of how much impact deliberate practice can have on your performance has stemmed from journalists misinterpreting the work of psychologist Anders Ericsson (his seminal work on elite musicians and how much deliberating practice they do is often seen as the genesis for this 10,000 hour myth).

Keen to put that right, he has recently released his book ‘Peak: Secrets for the new science of expertise’. This book is set to be very popular in both sport and education circles. (For a comprehensive review, see Daniel Willinghams thoughts here).

HOW TO MAXIMISE TRAINING AND PRACTICE

Knowing that deliberate practice accounts for 18% of variation in sporting performance (and not 100%) is interesting. The shift from interesting to useful comes via the tips that Anders Ericsson gives in his book on how to maximise training. What are some of the criteria to ensure you are engaging in deliberate practice?

Be targeted at improving a specific part of your game – imagine you are practising a song on an instrument and struggle with the middle section. Would it be better to practice the whole song through, or focus on the part you struggle with? The answer is definitely on the latter. With limited time, you want to target your training and focus on specific parts.
Take you out of your comfort zone – you don’t want to step so far out of your comfort zone that your ambitions far exceed your abilities. Stretching yourself means trying to improve to an amount that is just possible if you push yourself.

For example, it is difficult to improve at sports like tennis if you are always playing weaker players.

Likewise, if your opponent is so much better than you, then it is unlikely you will improve. Playing a slightly stronger opponent will help you improve the most.

Reinforce and build on previous training – A random scatter gun approach is unlikely to yield to long term games. Being able to link to and build upon previous training sessions will help solidify information into your long term memory. Psychologist often call this ‘scaffolding’ as it literally helps you build upon previous experiences.

Provide feedback on what you are doing – Feedback is the guide that athletes can follow to better performance. The voice of an older, wiser and more objective person can offer a perspective and vision that may be difficult for individuals to come up with themselves, especially if they are so engrossed in the task itself.

Strengthen your weakness and build on your strengths – Some athletes and coaches prefer to work on their weaknesses. The rationale being that this can make your harder to beat. Others prefer to work on strengths. This can help boost confidence and also provide athletes with real ‘weapons’, hopefully meaning they are more likely to win. Which you do will depend on the situation, context and the individual. This is where coaching becomes more of an art than that of a science. Whichever you choose, having a clear focus and rationale for why you are doing it matters.

Require hard work, intensity and full concentration – You can only maximise training if you give it your full focus. Developing skills is hard. By not putting in maximum effort, it’s unlikely that you are doing the other points previously mentioned (i.e. taking yourself out of your comfort zone). As the saying goes, ‘Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard’.

FINAL THOUGHT

It is interesting to note that the previous review on the impact of deliberate practice (the one that found it explained 18% variance in sport) concluded that it only impacted up to 4% of performance in education. This research is undoubtedly very valuable. It indicates how to maximise training and practice. It just seems that this knowledge is more valuable in the sporting rather than the education world.

For athletes looking to maximise their training in order to improve, the above tips provide a handy checklist to ensure that they are doing it right. If not, they may be working hard, but are unlikely to be working smart.