Prepare your athlete for success

In athletics, the goal has always been to win; that’s the goal of the game! Especially at the senior, college and professional levels, a coach is easily frustrated when athletes are not performing. Lack of performance generally results in the short term, in the loss of the game, and in the long term, in a coach losing his job. Athletes do not run for two main reasons: 1) they are not physically prepared or 2) they are not mentally prepared. The saying “it’s 90% mental, 10% physical” is the reality. Coaches tend to emphasize the importance of practicing, lifting weights, and staying fit, but what about the mental game? Can a coach mentally prepare his athletes before a competition and score more points in the win column?

William Cusick, author of All Customers Are Irrational, believes that a person’s decisions and actions are initiated in the subconscious mind and are influenced by external factors. “Priming describes a phenomenon in which a person is unconsciously reacting to an environment or stimulus that is inherently positive or negative” (Cusick, p. 88). The subconscious reduces decision making by gathering information from past experiences, patterns, and non-conscious stimuli (non-conscious priming). “Primary non-conscious cues can be words, category traits or concepts, environmental or material objects” (Brechue, William. “Non-conscious activation of behavior and performance; Priming success in the classroom”). These categories of preparation may not be useful for all athletes, but recognizing the potential influence and evaluating the results can have a positive impact on the team.

Brechue gives examples and investigated experiments for each priming technique.

Words: People trained with the concept of politeness or rudeness were less or more likely to interrupt a conversation (Bargh, et al., 1996). Putting equity first significantly altered price negotiations and more cooperative negotiation strategies between individuals (Maxwell, et al., 1999).

Environmental: When a picture of a fancy restaurant was displayed, people were prepared to recognize words associated with polite behavior. The main “fancy restaurant” also had a behavioral impact in that during a “feeding experiment” properly prepared individuals spent more time cleaning up after themselves and left their area cleaner than controls.

Trait / Behavior: The chameleon effect is the involuntary imitation of the expressions, actions or movements of other individuals during social interactions. (Chartran and Bargh, 1999). In a social setting, one individual adopts the expressions and gestures of the other individual. In an experimental setting, subjects consistently mimicked the smile, tremors of the feet, and body postures adopted by the experimenter during various cooperative or discussion tasks. The impact on the social environment showed that the subjects perceived their interaction more positively when the person imitated the gestures and postures of the subject. In contrast, subjects reported negative experiences when the experimenter explicitly avoided mimicking the subject’s expressions or movements.

Purpose: When asked to judge the interaction between two people from a vague description, individuals were more likely to judge the interaction as cooperative or competitive depending on the presence of a backpack or briefcase. Business objects (briefcase, conference table, etc.) stimulated a competitive environment and behavior. On the contrary, the backpack represented a leisure object that led to greater cooperation. Interestingly, these observations indicated a similar response when exposed to the real object or just an image of the object.

As a college coach, I feel like I can use these techniques to motivate my athletes to compete. In the past, the coaching staff repeatedly emphasized working on softball physical skills, which has contributed to greater success, but the team continues to struggle to stay mentally focused throughout the season. We have been known to start a game with little or no energy and lower the intensity if we fall behind on the scoreboard. I used to think it was a personal problem. The people on the team lacked mental toughness, competitive drive, and passion to succeed, so those were the reasons that contributed to failure. After researching the topic of preparation, I now realize that I have the power to influence my team in a positive and competitive direction. It is not a personnel problem; it is a lack of mental preparation.

There are many opportunities throughout the season to groom an athlete. The team locker room, bus trips for transportation, and days off between games provide plenty of time to subtly prepare players. This spring season, I want to experiment with my athletes by watching a motivational and inspiring movie on the bus or in the hotel room the day before a game, controlling our field environment by playing upbeat, high-energy music on game day, and Post softball related and non-softball photos depicting competing, attacking, winning, positivity and excellence in the locker room, as well as on the charter bus door. With all the current and past data, I am confident that preparing the Western Carolina softball team will mentally prepare them on the field and result in a winning 2016 season.