Total Game Plan » Peak Performance

Winning the Battle of Thoughts

Coach Tully — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:42:22 +0000

How do you even begin to talk about Novak Djokovic’s epic victory over Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final?

It lasted five hours, 53 minutes, nearly as long as the marriage between Kris Humphries and Kim Kardashian.

Both Djokovic and Nadal gave everything they had. At one point, after losing a 31-stroke rally, Djokovic lay prone on the court, seemingly spent. Within that moment he gave us a clue to help us through difficult times.

“Thousand thoughts going through the mind,” Djokovic said. “Trying to separate the right from wrong.”

Djokovic was describing something that he and all of us have in common. We all have thoughts racing through our mind. Some of them are good, some are bad. It’s our job to separate the two.

For instance, you can be tempted to think about the final score. It’s much more productive to think about the next point. You can worry about what happened, or you can keep your mind in the present. It’s all choice.

Djokovic, in other words, conquered his own thoughts as much as he defeated Nadal. It was mental toughness.

My favorite quote is: “Some people think the battle is against others. Winners understand the struggle is within the self.”

If you can win the struggle to stay focused on productive thoughts, the battle with others will go much more smoothly.

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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

The Secret of Feedback

Coach Tully — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:23:23 +0000

One day Hall of Fame baseball player Ted Williams watched a teammate return to the dugout after striking out.

“Tell me,” Williams said. “When you swung and missed that ball, did your bat go over the ball or under it?”

“What difference does it make,” the teammate wanted to know. “Either way, I struck out.”

It makes all the difference in the world, Williams explained. Knowing how you missed was the first step in preparing for the next time.

Williams was an expert on the art of receiving feedback. He examined what happened and used the information in his next attempt.

Feedback is available everywhere. Often the result of our actions will tell us what we’re doing right or wrong. For instance, if a golfer consistently hits a slice, the ball is telling him something about his swing.

You can bet that both the New York Giants and New England Patriots will be using feedback to prepare for Sunday’s Super Bowl. They played each other during the regular season, and they’re in a race to see who learned the most from that game.

Herb Brooks, mastermind of the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s gold medal in 1980, used feedback to make history. After the Soviet Union trounced his team 10-3 in a pre-Olympic exhibition, Brooks simply said, “We learned some things.” Two weeks later, the teams met again, and this time the U.S. won!

So if you’d like to be a champion, you must first do what Brooks, Williams and other did — become experts at receiving feedback.

Keeping Your Eyes on the Dream

Coach Tully — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:07:39 +0000

“If you have only two pennies left in the world, with the first penny, you should buy rice to feed your family. With the second penny, say the wise Japanese, you should buy a lily. The Japanese understand the importance of dreaming.”

We all love to dream. But we also need to make a living.

It takes strength to keep your eye on a distant goal when there are needs in the present. But ask yourself, “Can you give up what you want now for what you want most?”

Champions do this all the time. They ignore the distractions and temptations of the present. They have their feet on the earth and their gaze toward the sky.

My friend Gary Pritchard alludes to this way of living when he says, “Make your decisions based on the person you want to become, not the person you are.”

That means looking past outward circumstances and listening to something within the self.

Said Steve Jobs, “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Practice and Mindfulness

Coach Tully — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:55:53 +0000

Martina Navratilova, perhaps the best female tennis player who ever lived, once said, “I just try to concentrate on concentrating.”

Her phrase comes to mind as I digest a recent post on Larry O’Connor’s blog, Run4yr life. Larry is a marathoner preparing for Boston in April. From the sound of this post, he has reached a higher level of training, a level where he thinks carefully about the effect of each and every training move.

We call this mindfulness, and it’s one of the most important qualities we can bring to practice. Here’s the difference between practice and mindful practice.

In practice, you might hit 100 golf balls. In mindful practice, you hit one ball, analyze the result, and decide on the adjustments to be made. Then you hit another one and repeat the process. With practice you might improve. With mindful practice, you improve. A lot.

“What we hope ever to do with ease we may learn first to do with diligence,” said Samuel Johnson.

Mindful practice, also called deliberate practice, falls in line with the findings of Dr. Anders Ericksson, the world’s so-called “expert on experts.” His first condition for optimal learning is “motivation to attend to task.” In plain English, that means “”caring enough to think carefully about what you’re doing.”

It sounds like Larry O’Connor is doing just that.

Wayne Gretzky and Practice

Coach Tully — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:58:01 +0000

On Wayne Gretzky’s birthday — he turns 51 today — I always think of practice and of Gretzky’s father, Walter.

One day, when Wayne Gretzky was already the greatest hockey player in the world, he was practicing with his team, the Edmonton Oilers. Walter watched from the stands.

Afterwards, the two drove home together.

“You just wasted two hours of your life,” Walter Gretzky told his son. “If you’re going to practice, then do it right.”

No word on what happened the rest of the ride home. Maybe there was a sullen silence.

But Walter Gretzky’s comments are a reminder that even the world’s best need a wake-up call now and then. It can come from a coach, a family member, or an unexpected loss. That’s what happened to the Soviet hockey team when the U.S. Olympians defeated them in 1980.

Performers must be, in the words of golfer Bobby Jones, “everlastingly on the lookout against the self.”

Slumps often begin when things are going well. When results are good, performers never notice little flaws creeping into their game. The flaws only get discovered when results begin to fall.

Walter Gretzky knew his son well enough to know whether or not he was working hard. Trouble is, as Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has said, you can fool yourself about how hard you are working.

Don’t fool yourself about your practice ethic.

Team Culture

Coach Tully — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 03:42:42 +0000

Let’s start with a trick question.

Does your team have a culture?

Remember, it’s a trick question. And the answer is yes.

Whether in sports, in business or even in your family, your group has a culture.

It may be weak or it may be strong, but it’s a culture.

It may be positive or it may be negative, but it’s a culture.

And, as this article on the Fast Company blog points out, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Culture beats rules, it beats x’s and o’s. Culture may be the most important aspect of your team.

“Teams do not go physically flat, they go mentally stale,” said football legend Vince Lombardi.

Writes Shawn Parr on the Fast Company blog, “Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation.”

My friend and co-author Gary Pritchard devote a chapter to team culture in our book “Ten Things Great Coaches Know.” We define it as “the way things are done around here.”

Parr lists the benefits that come from the right kind of culture: focus, motivation, connection, cohesion and spirit.

He also offers the following four tips for building a positive culture.

1. Dynamic and engaging leadership
2. Living values
3. Responsibility and accountability
4. Celebrating successes and failures (that’s right, celebrating failures as well as successes).

Any leader seeking peak performance from a group, or in real team-building, should check the culture.

Prince Fielder and the Tigers

Coach Tully — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:18:55 +0000

Pursuing goals can be overrated.

Sometime they’re the wrong goals. And other times the way in which they’re being pursued is the wrong way.

In the case of Prince Fielder and the Detroit Tigers, the second case could be true. Fielder and the Tigers just agreed on a nine-year, $214 million deal, because team owner Mike Ilitch desperately wants to add a World Series title to the Stanley Cups his Detroit Red Wings have won.

The question is: Was signing Fielder the right way to pursue that dream?

Fielder is 27 years old and approaching his prime. He weighs 275 pounds, more than 75 pounds over an ideal weight for a man his age and height. That is, pardon the pun, huge.

At the same time, Fielder has been one of the most durable players in the major leagues, having never played fewer than 157 games. Will that durability continue, or have all those games taken a toll? In short, right now Fielder looks like a good bet, but where will he be three years from now? Remember, the contract is for nine years.

Then there’s the question of lineup chemistry. Will Fielder add $214 million of value to a team that won a series in the playoffs last year? Hard to say, even harder to measure. Baseball is filled with unproven articles of faith. One of them is that adding a great hitter to a lineup makes the other hitters even better. This may well be true, but there is no way to test it. You can’t have a controlled study, with Fielder in one lineup and not in another.

Finally comes the intangible team factor. Adding Fielder assures the players that the team is willing to spend for success. That could help motivation, energy and focus in the clubhouse.

Try to imagine 2020, when Fielder’s contract would expire. What factors would help you decide if the deal was worth it? If the Tigers won even one World Series, you’d have to say yes. Two titles would make it a no-brainer.

But suppose Fielder can’t win a World Series? Would a near-miss make it all worth it? Or would the Tigers have to point to increased revenues, and yearly status as a contender?

I wish Fielder and the Tigers luck. I think their contract is better than the one the Angels gave Albert Pujols, or even than the one the Marlins gave Jose Reyes, but I believe there were better ways to pursue the goal of a World Series title.

Daily Motivation

Coach Tully — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:21:56 +0000

A few days ago, a coached reach out to me, said that her team was going through a rough stretch, and asked if I had any wisdom to offer.

I told her I had no wisdom of my own, but that there was plenty in this article from the Gold Medal Squared Web site.

Written by Loyola-Marymount volleyball coach Tom Black, the article tells of a team that faces a huge fight in every match. Black says a coach must do three things: 1) teach students how to learn, 2) remember you’re part of something bigger than yourself, and 3) celebrate growth.

Black really motivated me with this article, because — unlike the scores of games — all those three items are things I can control.
In fact, when I read the article I was wishing I had seen it during my own season. And that’s the point. Get all the motivation you can get! Don’t wait until you are way down in the dumps. Daily motivation helps direct your energy and focus toward the right thing.

And motivation is doubly important for students and athletes, because you can’t build real skill without it.

Motivation is where you find it. You can ask a friend, like my coaching colleague did. You can read a book, see a movie, look up a daily quote. Or you can listen to a daily motivational message from sports psychologist Dr. Rob Gilbert. It’s called “Success Hotline,” it’s free and the message changes every day. The number is (973) 743-4690. My friend Karin Abarbanel finds it so valuable in her field — writing — that she dedicated a post to it on her blog, Karin Writes Dangerously.

Keep in mind that real motivation begins with and within you. You have to look for it. Staying motivated is a big part of your mental game.

“The best motivating is self-motivating,” said speaker Jim Rohn. “The guy says, ‘I wish someone would come by and turn me on.’ What if they don’t show up? You’ve got to have a better plan for your life.”
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TotalGamePlan offers Winner’s Workshops for schools, sports teams and businesses. The emphasis is on motivation, skill-building and teamwork. To bring a Winner’s Workshop to your group, just email coachtully@totalgameplan.com or call (973) 800-5836. To order a copy of “Ten Things Great Coaches Know,” click here.

Previewing Success

Coach Tully — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:27:04 +0000

Lawrence Tynes did more than kick the New York Giants into the Super Bowl for the second time in his NFL career. He gave an example of a powerful mental technique that anyone can use.

“I imagined this last night,” Tynes said after his 31-yard field goal 7:06 into overtime gave the Giants a 20-17 victory over the San Francisco 49ers. “It was 42 yards.”

No matter about the distance. The point is that Tynes previewed his own success. And he wasn’t the only one. According to this blog item by ESPN’s Dan Graziano, Giants’ special teams player Devin Thomas saw himself making big plays. And he did, recovering two fumbles, including one that set up Tynes’ game-winner.

“I knew I was going to do it,” Thomas said. “I was just thinking today was one of those crazy days where something crazy’s going to turn the game. And I had a vision in my mind that I would be the guy who did it.”

Charles Garfield, author of the widely acclaimed “Peak Performance” trilogy, has noted the effect of previewing success

.“I’ve discovered that numerous peak performers use the skill of mental rehearsal of visualization,” Garfield said. “They mentally run through important events before they happen.”

Aided by all this visualization, the Giants now enter Super Bowl XLVI for a rematch with the New England Patriots, who advanced when Baltimore Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff failed where Tynes succeeded.

“The timing was just a little off,” Cundiff said after missing a 32-yard field goal attempt that would have sent the game to overtime. “I’m disappointed. I let my teammates down.”

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis disagreed. “Not one play won or lost this game,” Lewis said. “There’s no ‘Oh, Billy’s the fault. Billy missed the (kick).’ There’s no freaking ‘Billy missed the kick.’ It happened. Move on.”

For some people, it will be harder than for others.

Four Words for Great Leaders

Coach Tully — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:13:43 +0000

Want to be a great leader? Your task can be summed up in four words, according to this article in Inc.

Aspire. Plan. Inspire. Execute.

“Great leaders do not aim for the easily achievable,” says the article, written by Matthew Swyers. That’s what he means by “aspire.”

The more lofty your goal, however, the more you need to do the other three things: plan, inspire and execute.

“Aspiration without a plan is simply a dream,” says Swyer.

As for inspiration, you must give those around you a sense of what they can achieve if they follow the plan. You must get them to see the opportunity. You must motivate.

Finally, you must execute. Hockey coach Pierre Page once said, “You can chop wood all you want. Sooner or later, someone has to build the house.”

Aspire. Plan. Inspire. Execute.