Stop playing those mind games
Issue: Volume 29 Number 1
Sport psychologist Dr Phil Jauncey shatters stereotypes. When listening to him, pack away any preconceived notions you might have about his profession.
Sport is 95 per cent mental and five per cent physical? Not so says Jauncey, the mind is over-rated.
To get anywhere you need to have positive thinking, motivation, a great attitude and be focused? Well, concentrate on that and you will likely be a failure, he says.
Always go out with a win-at-all-costs attitude? Never go out to win, he says. The moment you do it your instincts are wrong and besides, you cannot control the outcome because it’s dependant on other factors.
Athlete superstitions? Can be very useful, he says.
Jauncey is a sport psychologist whose perspective centres on the power of actions, not those of the mind or brain.
His premise has found support with many in the sports community. Among his clients he numbers the Australian cricket team, the Brisbane Lions Australian football team, the Australian baseball team, the Brisbane Broncos rugby league team and Olympic diver Chantelle Newbury to name a few.
Jauncey cites a number of common misconceptions that people often have in sport and in life.
‘A common one is that “I’m feeling bad so I can’t really perform well today, I’ll have to wait until I’m feeling better to really get the results”, or “everything has gone wrong so I’m not going to perform well today”.
‘The power of positive doing is about choice. It means that you can be feeling pretty bad, but you can still act or perform well. Before the Sydney Olympics Herb Elliott raised an interesting statistic. He said that something like 62 per cent of world records were set when something had gone wrong.’
Jauncey practises what he preaches. He rides 50 to 60 kilometres every weekend despite, he says, the protestations of his 58-year-old mind. ‘My brain says “Stop doing this, you’re too old” and I just pedal harder,’ he laughs. ‘I inevitably feel better at the end of it.’ When he received news of his mother’s death his riding friends all urged him to stay at home. ‘I could easily have stayed at home with the blankets over my head,’ he says. ‘But I knew that it would not bring her back and so I went. This didn’t mean that I was denying how I felt – I blubbered like a baby the whole way, but it was about positive doing, getting out there and controlling my actions.’
Jauncey says another misconception, particularly in sport, is the importance of a moment. ‘It’s that thought that this shot at goal, this wave, this dive is really important, so I have to stop and think about it.
‘Wrong. When we’re under pressure our instincts are wrong. It’s like saying, “don’t mess this up” or “don’t do badly”. These thoughts are like heat seeking missiles and you will do exactly that. If I tell you “don’t think of an apple”, what’s the first thing that you think of?
‘I’ve seen this sort of thing affect players in golf, in baseball, in softball. If you’re a right-handed player, you usually and automatically put your left foot towards where you want the ball to go. When you’re under pressure, you start thinking about what you should be doing and you won’t take that natural posture, you’ll put the emphasis on your opposite foot. In effect you turn off the computer that automatically puts you where you need to be.
‘I’ve seen it with AFL players too. If I asked a player to kick the ball to a team mate who was standing 40 metres away, pretty much 100 per cent of the time, the player would put the ball within one metre either side of his team mate. But if I put the player in front of goal for a set shot at the same distance and said do the same thing, the results would be different. So, what’s changed? The player has stopped doing and started thinking about what he needs to do.’
So how do players turn ‘the computer’ back on? Jauncey says this is where coaches can help by focusing on their role as observer and educator, not trainer. He says a first point is to ask athletes ‘what are you doing when you’re doing well?’ and ‘what are you doing when you’re not doing well?’ He calls these a player’s ‘flags’, and says that often athletes are unaware of them. Jauncey cites a softball player who spins her bat before taking her stance, but when under pressure goes through a different pre-stance preparation because she is thinking too much about what she needs to do.
He also says in some situations superstitions can be good for the wrong reason because ‘they are familiar and they are triggering the brain to do the right thing’.
At a junior level, Jauncey says there is a need to keep things fun. ‘If a kid playing soccer says “I’m bad at penalty goals” it’s probably because his or her brain is saying “Don’t miss, don’t miss”,’ Jauncey says. ‘But if, for instance, in training you started to name one side of the goals let’s say Bert, and the other side Ernie, then you can turn the computer back on by saying to the player, “kick it to Ernie, kick it to Bert, kick it to Ernie”.
‘Parents and coaches help juniors develop. You shouldn’t try to get their minds right, you should try to get their actions right. Help them be aware of what works for them. That applies equally for junior or elite athletes.’
