Working with Over-Confidence: Finding Competitive Balance

by Mike Margolies

Bio: Mike is a sports psychology consultant with over 30 years of experience and has trained athletes for all levels of competition including youth, collegiate, professional, and Olympic.

Part of the goal in working with athletes either as a sport psychology consultant or as a coach is to produce confident athletes. We know both from practical application and research that confident athletes perform at higher levels than athletes lacking in this competency of Emotional Intelligence (EQ). However, it is important to look at confidence on a continuum from low self confidence to overconfidence. We know athletes fail on either end of this continuum.

Most psychological literature suggests that human beings are overconfident in their abilities. We tend to overestimate our ability to perform in given situations. This is part of human nature and perhaps related to our need to achieve and for survival. Lack of confidence certainly hinders effort; if someone believes they will fail, we know they will make less of an effort. That said, overconfidence can lead to failure, and it’s an issue that’s not covered nearly enough in the available literature.

Researchers believe evolution likely favors overconfidence (OC). People having an overly positive self-image tend to win out over others with more accurate assessments in sports and other activities. By making every kid a winner, sports educators have probably contributed to this notion. We need to remind ourselves even in a discussion about overconfidence that in order to achieve success, we must believe we can. Being OC may drive someone to believe they can achieve almost anything. Keeping in mind the adage “If you think you can or you think you can’t – you are right”. Overconfidence is often the information deficit between perception and performance. Objective feedback is the best independent variable to help athletes maintain balance.

Three issues stand out in talking about overconfidence. First, the drive for preparation is often lacking in those that are overconfident. This can be physical and mental. Athletes that are OC may not put in the effort needed to prepare for a contest. When this is the case, coaches must be aware and communicate the proper challenges for athletes. Often this is done by inventing scenarios about the opposition to create focus for the athletes. I recommend creating practice and contest challenges that require athletes to prepare as if they were getting ready to compete against equals or slightly better competition. Require skilled practices where a high set of goals need to be met.

After you’ve create a solid practice routine, the second issue is effort during a contest. Being OC may mean that athletes are willing to sleepwalk through a game. Again coaches can use goal setting to help athletes stay on task. It is an opportunity to play athletes that don’t often get the same playing time that starters have earned. This motivates everyone and can push OC players not wanting to find themselves on the bench because of lack of focused mental and physical effort.

Third, overconfidence is often linked to arrogance. Arrogance in an athlete can lead to conflicts on teams. A certain amount of cockiness is admired by coaches and teammates but it can also be an issue when it causes a disruption on a team and cohesion takes a beating. Of the two other issues, this requires a strong coach to guide the athlete, while not shaking their confidence. The old adage “A dogs bark is more often than not just a loud noise”. One good way of working with athletes like this is to discuss role models and have them describe the athlete’s temperament and not just their athletic prowess.

The primary ways we help athletes using mental training to teach them the emotional skill set to maintain proper balance. This involves goal setting, monitoring their self talk, helping them identify positive role models, and increasing their self awareness with accurate performance information. A runner gets accurate information, as the stop watch only speaks truths. On a team, an athlete is more likely to get false information, both positive and negative, from a game and practice because the information is more subjective. Coaches and others can help make information usable with good input.

The bottom line revolves around self awareness. Confidence is interrelated with other EQ constructs. Helping athletes develop a balanced understanding of themselves and their abilities enables them to find the proper competitive balance and perform at their highest levels.

For more information, please visit Themental-game.com

The Big “C”: Building Confidence in Athletics

by Dr. Jennifer Gapin

Bio: Dr. Gapin is an Assistant Professor of Kinesiology and Health Education at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and is a Certified Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology.

“It’s this wave that you ride, and the greatest athletes in the world either make their peaks and valleys a lot less noticeable or they’re really good at hiding them.” – Mia Hamm

Being a confident athlete is easier said than done. Most people think that elite athletes are confident because they don’t doubt their abilities. Actually, the opposite is true. Interviews with professional athletes reveal that many have negative thoughts and doubts prior to performing. What separates the elite athlete is the ability to use mental skills to boost their confidence when they need to. It involves a constant internal struggle. Successful athletes are those that are able to maintain confidence despite the negative thoughts and doubts that enter their minds.

“Before the race, if I’m starting to spiral down some negative thought, I’ve trained my mind to recognize that immediately and be able to make the adjustment to stop thinking about that”

- Michael Johnson, US Olympian

Building confidence in players and the team begins with consistent coaching behaviors that demonstrate a positive attitude and support, regardless of winning or losing. As a coach there are a number of things you can do to boost confidence in your athletes.

Create Practice Situations that Align with Competitive Games

As a coach, preparation doesn’t just involve physical training and tactics. It involves putting your athletes through challenges and scenarios that are as close to competition as possible. This helps the athlete learn about strengths and weaknesses and feel prepared to adjust in competition when things don’t always go as expected. If your athletes enter competition knowing they have done everything to prepare for pressure situations, confidence will stick.

Create Highlight Reels

Watching videotapes of opponents can also be a great confidence booster. Most athletes feel more confident when they know about their opponents’ strengths and weaknesses and can mentally prepare for those ahead of time. If opponent tapes are unavailable, try creating an individual highlight real for each athlete to watch before competition. This mechanism allows the athlete to see themselves succeeding and is great for boosting confidence before competition.

Focus on Controllables

It sounds cliché, but one of the toughest lessons for young athletes to learn is how to focus on controllables. Too often athletes choose to focus on things related to competition that are outside their control: weather, opponents, field conditions, etc. By helping them turn their energy on to what they have control over (training, mental and physical preparation, attitude, self-talk, etc.); they are able to regain their confidence and use their energy to their advantage.

Don’t Lose Sight of the Big Picture

Remind your athletes of the big picture when you are discussing individual progress. It’s the sum of the parts that make up the athlete, and while the athlete may be too focused on one weakness, they are missing all the little successes and improvements in other aspects of their game. If an athlete is focused too much on mistakes, have them look at it from a different perspective. What things are they doing to help their teammates? How is that player contributing to the overall success of the team?

Recognize and Reward Good Performance

Players gain confidence when coaches notice where they excel and tell them publicly. If there is a weakness that needs to be addressed, try using the sandwich approval. Start with praise, insert constructive criticism, and close with more praise.  Enjoying small successes make the criticism much easier to digest and to take action on.

For information, please visit siue.edu/education/khe/gapinbio.shtml and appliedsportpsych.org

The Art of Sustained Confidence

by Dr. K.C. Wilder

Bio: Dr. Wilder is a performance consultant specializing in youth performance enhancement, overcoming sport performance anxiety, and balancing the freedoms of sport and life.

Mental Preparation and Sustained Confidence

Mental preparation and building sustained confidence for an individual and for your team takes time, effort, patience and perseverance. It is a fine art to balance control and freedom within a team practice. One of the keys to minimize your athletes’ performance anxiety is to focus on what your athletes are doing right.

What are Your Athletes Doing Right?

Focusing your attention on what they are doing right will build their sustained confidence and maximize their talent. The more they build on their self-trust, the greater their control on attentional focus, thoughts, and emotions. The consistency of their confidence will lead to less performance anxiety, fear of failure, fear of success, and fear of letting oneself or others down. The athlete with sustained confidence will accept mistakes, move on and not dwell on negative consequences. Similar to having consistent routines, sustained confidence will lead to more consistent performances.

Performance Anxiety Minimized

By focusing on what your athletes do right, you are contributing to their self-efficacy and reducing performance anxiety. In contrast, constant criticism of their performance will contribute to their frustration and self-doubt. Young athletes are highly influenced by parents, teachers and coaches. Your mission as a coach is to identify  methods and strategiesto gain a more consistent level ofconfidence. Let your athletes know that making a mistake on the athletic field, court, track or arena does not make them a failure as a person.

Coaching Style Can Be Adapted.

As a coach, you have control over your approach with your athletes and your response to their execution of a skill. Provide positive, functional feedback and focus on what you want your athletes to do and not what you don’t want them to do. The notion is simple; however, the execution of building confidence can be challenging in the heat of the battle. Coaches can experience levels of frustration that is sometimes difficult to combat. Develop your own keen sense of awareness of what is right about you and the way that you coach.

Commitment To Sustained Confidence.

Make it your responsibility to make the commitment to have sustained confidence in your team and sustained confidence in each individual athlete. Design practice or drills that can provide some of the building blocks for confidence. Remind your athletes that anxiety is related to self-doubt and that they have a choice to have a little bit of self-doubt or a lot of self-doubt. Instill confidence by having your athletes learn how to fight self-doubt. After practice, devote 10 minutes to their mental preparation. This can include progressive relaxation exercises coupled with positive mental imagery. You can review the past successes of the team and all individual successes.

Key Concepts on Confidence For Coaches

1. Sustained confidence emphasizes the importance of consistency of assurance.

2. Sustained confidence is freedom from fear of failure in the face of obstacles or setbacks.

3. Identify what jolts an athlete’s sustained confidence. What turns their perception from self-belief to distrust?

4. When you have sustained confidence you have consistency of thought, behavior and performance.

5. You can instill sustained confidence with your team through your behaviors, feedback and practice design.

Questions to consider:

-What do you do as a coach to instill sustained confidence?

-Does your practice design instill confidence in your players?

-Are there certain drills that you can do to instill confidence in your players?

-Do you prepare your players for competition through positivity and trust?

For more information, please visit www.drkcwilder.com

Hot Off the Press: Coaching Wisdom, Mike Harrity (Rigor Rating: 7)

by Dr. Randall Coeshott

Bio: Dr. Coeshott is a Sport Psychologist located in the San Francisco Bay area who teaches athletes how to achieve greater satisfaction out of their sport, health, and life.

by Mike Harrity, Sellers Publishing, Inc  2012, ISBN 13-978 1-41620655-2

Why it’s Great

In Coaching Wisdom, Mike Harrity, an Associate Athletic Director at the University of Notre Dame, highlights the common strategies coaches like Lou Holtz, Tom Osborne, and John Wooden use to achieve success. Harrity covers the topics of creating a caring environment, motivating and inspiring a team, creating a coaching philosophy, building team unity, and effective communication.

Readers are treated to excerpts from one on one interviews and are provided with direct examples of what the coaching greats have done to become successful. The author connects the dots between the commonalities in approach found across coaches. The strength of the book can be found in the lengthy individual profiles of coaches provided in each chapter. Here the reader is allowed the chance to to gleam a few points of wisdom from each master coach.

Where it Misses

Coaching Wisdom falls short at times when the author fails to elaborate or extend from the coaches comments to shed light on the finer details of a concept necessary for success. While the book does a good job outlining learning or leadership concepts for coaches to learn, some concepts could be laid out more clearly, particularly for those less familiar with the topics to begin with.

If You read Nothing Else

Readers should take note of the “Chalk Talk” provided at the end of each chapter. Here, Harrity expands upon the typical bullet point summary of each chapter by offering several useful tips and strategies coaches can employ to develop each leadership skill. Don’t miss the forward, as it gives a great insight into the mind of Butler Universities’ basketball coach, Brad Stevens, in particular his belief of the importance of learning from others who have been successful.

Rigor Rating:  7

Much of the information provided in Coaching Wisdom is repackaged work that you’ve seen before. That said, the package is well thought out and provides clear direction in applying the concepts to improving your coaching approach.

Take it to the Field

by Greg Liberto

Bio: Greg Liberto is a Performance Coach at INDARE Golf, professional speaker, and creative writer for the “Thinking Game” blog.

With Take it to the Field, we seek to give our coaches the best possible guidance on exercises to utilize with their players to improve their psychological approach.

Building confidence in your athletes starts with preparation. Teaching the athlete to focus on what they can control is an ongoing process. Athletes obsessed with the strengths of their opposition (a factor out of their control), rather than their own performance (a factor within their control), will naturally be less confident heading into competition.

The SUCCESS BRIDGE

The “Success Bridge” maximizes your athletes’ potential by creating an emotional connection to the athlete they WILL BECOME.

Here is how it works.

Realizing that implementation of each plan takes DISCILPINE and STRATEGY, the next step entails one-on-one interaction to set the parameters and put the plan into action.

Practicing Discipline:  The 7 Day Challenge

To test your athletes DISCIPLINE, I utilize a simple activity called the ‘7 DAY CHALLENGE’ to see if they have what it takes.

This involves moving a small object (coin, ring, marble) one inch a day for seven days. If you think it sounds elementary, it is.  If you think it sounds silly, it is not.

LET ME REPEAT

Have them move an object one inch a day, for seven days, NO EXCEPTIONS.

WHY?

What almost EVERY PERSON lacks to achieve what they want is DISCIPLINE.

If they are not DISCIPLINED enough to complete a simple task for SEVEN days, how will they possibly be DISCIPLINED enough to commit to their Success Bridge plan?

I will tell you from experience, THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT!!!

As a practitioner, this is where I start all my athletes. If they are not able to complete these two simple exercises, I will not work with them. The effort the athlete puts into this process is critical to the long term effort they put into the sport and life skills we’re interested in improving.

We all need to make an emotional connection to what we really want. These connections are what motivate us to continue when we have doubt or uncertainty. The exercise above helps the athlete create an emotional connection with their future self. If you accomplish this connection, you’ll find the athlete doesn’t want to let his future self down.