Athletes, coaches and sport fans often mistake the difference between superstition, rituals and routines. If you’ve ever watched Rafael Nadal serve, you’ve probably noticed his methodical repertoire of hand gestures and movements. From touching the back and front of his shorts, then his shoulders, nose, ears, and eventually his thighs. In his autobiography, Nadal writes, “Some call it superstition, but it’s not. If it were superstition, why would I keep doing the same thing over and over whether I win or lose? It’s a way of placing myself in a match, ordering my surroundings to match the order I seek in my head.” In sports it is critical for athletes and coaches to understand and distinguish the difference between superstitions, rituals, and routines.
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The Confidence Continuum
How do you build your confidence in sports? Athletes often come seek out sport psychologists because their confidence is too low. Many athletes, especially female identifying athletes, express concern that they will be perceived as ‘arrogant’ or ‘not a team player’ if their confidence is too high? The gender confidence gap is real, and it impacts many female athletes and women’s sports teams today.
One of the biggest misconceptions about confidence in sports is that most athletes and coaches think confidence is simply the belief in one’s ability to win or succeed. The problem with this definition of confidence is that it’s too narrow and often leads to a simplified “yes or no”, “you either have it or you don’t” type of thinking, when in fact confidence is much more complex.
Confidence is an accumulation of one’s unique achievements across many different tasks and situations, coupled with preparation for the upcoming event, which enables one to develop specific expectations of achieving.
Burton & Raedeke, 2008
Most athletes experience a spectrum of confidence levels that fluctuate throughout the season based on any number of both internal and external factors. Therefore, when teaching about confidence to athletes and coaches, I encourage them to consider this broader concept of confidence. It is much more helpful and accurate to think of confidence as a continuum centered by optimal confidence, with underconfidence on one end and overconfidence on the other.
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Using Routines to Mentally Prepare for Competition on the Road
In a typical season most teams play 50% or more games “away” from home or on the road. And yet, very few teams actually prepare for the differences between competing at home and away. The sheer number of away competitions that athletes can expect to experience demonstrates the importance of mentally preparing athletes to compete on the road.
One of the most effective mental performance strategies to help athletes adjust to discomfort and dysregulation that comes with playing away is for athletes to develop a pre-competition routine. A pre-competition routine or systematic ritual serves to increase athlete confidence and improve concentration (Vernacchia, McGuire, & Cook, 1996). To mentally prepare athletes for away competition, it can also be helpful to ask questions such as: What do you miss the most when you are competing away from home (Gardner & Moore, 2004)?
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Why You Cannot Afford to Ignore Positive Psychology
When it comes to the field of positive psychology, there’s a ton of information and misunderstanding. Many coaches feel resistant to the idea of shifting their coaching philosophy from a deficit mentality to a strength-based one. The most common question that comes up is how will players improve their weaknesses if we only focus on their strengths? In this post, I’ll answer that question, along with the other most common questions about what positive psychology is and why it’s so important to understand.
What exactly is positive psychology?
Positive psychology is a framework based in scientific research that contains formal strength assessments to help athletes reach their optimal potential (Biswas-Diener, 2010). Martin Seligman is considered the father of positive psychology because his research on resilience, happiness, wellbeing, and strengths laid the foundation for a shift from focusing on mental illness, trauma, suffering, and pain to focusing on happiness, wellbeing, flourishing, flow, and strengths (Ackerman, 2022). Positive psychology ultimately asks what’s right with people, instead of what’s wrong with them. (Ackerman, 2022).
[Read more…] about Why You Cannot Afford to Ignore Positive PsychologyPositive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living.” (Peterson, 2008).
In the Huddle with Kevin Hambly, Stanford University Volleyball
After inheriting the program in 2017, Kevin Hambly led the Cardinal women’s volleyball program to back-to-back NCAA national titles. In 2018 he was named the Pac-12 and AVCA Pacific North Region Coach of the Year. Prior to taking the helm as the Director of Women’s Volleyball at Stanford, he was the head coach at Illinois for eight seasons, where he led the Fighting Illini to six NCAA regional appearances and the 2011 national championships.
What does the Stanford women’s volleyball team do for mindset training?
We do a lot of stuff that we work on individually. We see what the needs are of the individuals. We talk a lot about confidence. Confidence is where the training and the mindset intersect. If you put the time in, you can develop confidence. The other things that we talk about (are) mindfulness and finding your center. We talk about breathing. We do some meditation training. The thing that we talk directly about as far as competing on the floor is; being aware of where your thoughts in competition, being aware of where your thoughts are in practice and if they are negative thoughts, replacing those thoughts. We talk a lot about thought replacement and being aware of (what) you’re thinking. Replace the thought “I can’t do this” with – “I can do this. I am strong. I am powerful. I got this.” We talk a lot about that thought replacement.
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Inside the Huddle with Kirsten Bernthal Booth, Creighton University Head Volleyball Coach
When Kirsten Bernthal Booth took over the Creighton University Women’s Volleyball program in 2003, the team had a record of 3-23 the previous year. Since then, the Creighton women’s volleyball team has become one of only 10 Division 1 volleyball teams to be ranked in the year-end AVCA Top 25 poll each of the last five years. In 2015 Creighton had their first Sweet Sixteen appearance and in 2016 they made their first run to the Elite Eight.
The Kirsten Bernthal Booth that was hired back in 2003 inherited a team that won three games in a season. How did you convert the culture of your team to adopt a “winning mentality”.
I’ve always been a coach that believes in process. Doing the right things and not being totally locked into outcomes. To me, as an athlete and as a coach, that frees you a little bit. We’d really focus on process and taking risks. In a small way, if a player tipped, they were probably going to get yelled at. If they had a perfect set and they made a low risk decision, they were going to get in trouble with us. And if they had a good set and they went for it, regardless of outcome, we were going to cheer for that. It allowed them (the players) to go for it and know that there weren’t going to be ramifications. I know that sounds simple, but it really did switch the mentality. We’re a pretty high risk program. When you get a good ball, we’re going to go for it. It’s paid dividends because at the Division I level, if you give the other team that opportunity, they’re going to throw it down your throat, so we’ve got to seize it.
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