Listening to the voices in your head: identifying and adapting athletes' self-talk

Male athlete talking to his coach
Author:  Michelle Austin, ACT Academy of Sport Psychologist
Issue: Volume 28 Number 4

How athletes think or what they say to themselves can have a critical impact on their performance. Unfortunately athletes are often taught to tune in to their bodies or their physical skills, but are not taught to tune in to their minds or their mental skills.

Self-talk has been described as ‘the key to cognitive control’ (Bunker, Williams and Zinsser, 1993) and is usually referring to internal dialogue, including thought content and self-statements (Hardy, Jones and Gould, 1998).

There are four main types of self-talk that are generally employed by athletes. These are:

  • negative (‘I’ll never be any good at this’)
  • positive (‘that was fantastic’)
  • technical or instructional (‘weight balanced and breathe’)
  • neutral (‘I wonder what is for lunch?’ or imagining planning a holiday, etc.).

It is generally accepted that negative self-talk is associated with worse performance, whereas positive self-talk is associated with better performance. Positive self-talk may benefit an athlete by impacting on their self-confidence, anxiety control, concentration and mood. Technical or instructional self-statements can also be used to initiate appropriate actions (such as using a cue word to trigger a particular movement), and are often provided by the coach in the form of feedback. Neutral self-talk is often used by endurance athletes to dissociate from the rigours of their event.

It is my experience that athletes tend to employ a predominance of negative self-talk. There are many reasons why this may be the case, including:

  • tuning in to errors so they can fix them, but then dwelling on them
  • receiving a great deal of negative feedback or criticism, or filtering out positives and only perceiving negatives
  • being low in self-confidence
  • being perfectionist and setting unrealistic standards
  • engaging in all-or-nothing thinking (‘I can’t shoot’) or over-generalisation (‘I always miss those shots’).

Many athletes are told they ‘need to be more positive’, and to reduce their self-doubt or negative thinking. However for many people it is tough to change from ‘my passing sucks’ to ‘my passing is great’. While there is a certain element of truth to ‘fake it till you make it’, many athletes find that leap from negative to positive self-talk too unrealistic or difficult. A combination of positive self-talk (for motivation and encouragement) and technical or instructional self-talk (to keep them focused on technique and performance) may be the best method of improving self-talk, performance and self-confidence.

Before a coach can assist athletes to change their self-talk, it is useful to first of all identify the type and frequency of self-talk. The following drills are designed to help athletes (and coaches) tune in to the content and frequency of their self-talk. After any of these drills, lead a group discussion on what their predominant thoughts were.

  • Set the athlete or group up in any drill that is fairly continuous or repetitive. Explain that thinking about their thinking will feel unnatural, but that they should do their best to perform the drill to the best of their ability, while also tuning in to how or what they are thinking. Then ask them to identify every negative thought by raising their hand, to identify every positive thought by clapping their hands twice, and to identify every technical or instructional thought by patting themselves on the head. (Optional extra: have some observers keep a tally of the athletes’ responses.)
  • Ask your athletes to vocalise each thought as they have it. This is challenging at first as people will feel self-conscious, and then noisy, as people get used to it. You can record this if you have the appropriate equipment, or have assistants to keep a tally.
  • Use a paper-and-pencil exercise to have athletes record as many of their thoughts as they can at the end of a drill or training session, and then classify them into negative, positive or technical.
  • Have a large number of rubber bands available (not too tight). Allow the athletes to stop at any point in training to place a rubber band on their right wrist if they have a negative thought, or on their left wrist if they have a positive or technical thought.

Once you have identified the thoughts that need to be adapted, use the following drills and exercises to assist your athletes to reframe them in a more positive and/or technical fashion. Provide time at training for your athletes to practise these exercises, and incorporate them into your drills whenever possible.

  • Paper-and-pencil exercise to reframe thoughts — have the athletes list their most commonly occurring negative thoughts, and then adapt them to be more constructive. For example:
Negative or destructive thought
 Positive or technical adaptation
I always miss that shot  I’m a good shooter, I just need to keep my weight balanced
I hate these long runs  I am feeling fitter every day

 

  • Teach your athletes to externalise (get out of their own heads) by focusing on movement or communication in response to negative thoughts or in response to errors, which often lead to negative thoughts. Design drills that specifically allow them time to practise these responses. For example, a throwing and catching drill could incorporate a second phase or transition element for individuals after they miss a catch, where they are recovering the ball or calling out to a team mate.
  • Discuss team strategies for dealing with particular events that tend to make your athletes more negative. For example; identify strategies such as a particular call or team play for use immediately after conceding a point, or a turnover in possession.
  • Identify process goals based on technique. This will help your athletes focus on technical points and improvement, rather than dwell on negatives.
  • Identify the situations and/or events that tend to make your athletes negative or positive, then employ problem-solving to increase the incidence of positive events or responses, and decrease the incidence of negative ones.
  • Help your athletes to increase their self-confidence. There are many ways to do this and any decent sports psychology book will have a wealth of information. For a start try Bunker et al. (1993) or Hardy et al. (1998), as listed below.
  • Teach your athletes affirmations. These are positive self-statements such as ‘I am strong and confident’ or ‘I am a great defender’ or ‘I always keep my feet moving’.
  • Teach your athletes to use thought stopping, a simple three-step technique to change their negative self-talk into positive or technical self-talk:
    • recognise that you need to change the way you are thinking
    • say ‘stop’ to yourself, and include a physical action if desired, such as clicking your fingers
    • replace the negative thinking with a constructive self-statement such as ‘who has the ball?’ or ‘fast hands’, and then perform that action.
  • Access resources for reducing over-analysing and letting go of negative thinking. Excellent examples are Don’t sweat the small stuff and Easier than you think, both by Richard Carlson.
  • Go through the table on common thinking distortions, and have your athletes identify their most common thinking errors by putting them into their own words. You can take this one step further by having them write their most frequently used distortion on a scrap on paper and having a ceremonial burial or destruction of it, helping them to relinquish at least one source of negative thinking.

Common thinking distortions (or the language of crazy-making)

Style

Description

Example

Filtering

You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively

‘I didn’t play well, I missed that one pass’ or ‘my catching has been terrible’

All or nothing thinking

Things are black or white, no grey areas. If your performance is less than perfect, you see yourself as a total failure

‘I’m useless because I can’t shoot’

Over-generalisation

You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat

‘I always miss those shots’

Jumping to conclusions

Mind-reading: Without asking them, you know how people are thinking and what their motives are

Fortune-telling: you feel that things will turn out badly and feel convinced that your prediction is an established fact

Mind-reading: ‘The coach looks grumpy, I know he’s mad at me’

 

Fortune-telling: ‘this shot is going to miss’

Magnification and minimisation

Exaggerating the importance of things (such as your error or other’s achievements) or minimising things to appear insignificant (such as your achievements or other’s errors)

‘I missed that shot, I’m never going to be selected’ or ‘who cares if I passed well and am the fittest, those things don’t count and I’ll never make the team’

Personalising

Everything people do or say is a reaction to you, always comparing yourself to others, assuming you are the cause of a negative event that is out of your control

‘He said everyone screwed up, but I know that was just for me’

‘I’ll never be as good as her’

Control fallacies

Internal control: I am the cause of the success/failure

 

External control: it’s out of my hand, it’s fate

Internal: ‘If they’d only pass to me, I can win this for us’ or ‘don’t pass it to me, I’ll lose it for us’

External: ‘the umpires are biased, there’s no way we can win’

Copping out

Putting all the blame on others, having a victim mentality

‘I know I shouldn’t play that shot, but she forced me to with her pass’

Disqualifying the positive

You reject positive experiences by insisting they don’t count for some reason or other.

‘Who cares if I pass well, I can’t defend’

Should statements

Trying to motivate yourself with should and shouldn’t as if you need to be whipped and punished to do anything (= guilt) or direct should statements to others (= anger, frustration)

‘I should be able to pass better’ or ‘they should get me the ball more’

References and further reading

Bunker, L, Williams, JM and Zinsser, N 1993, ‘Cognitive techniques for improving performance and self-confidence’, in JM Williams (ed.), Applied sport psychology: personal growth to peak performance, Mayfield, Mountain View, CA. pages numbers?

Carlson, R 1997, Don’t sweat the small stuff, Bantam, Milson’s Point, NSW.

Carlson, R 2005, Easier than you think, HarperCollins, New York, NY.

Hardy, L, Jones, G and Gould, D 1998, Understanding psychological preparation for sport: theory and practice of elite performers, John Wiley and Sons, West Sussex, UK. pages numbers?


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