Mindfulness the next frontier in sports performance
If the word Mindfulness made you raise an eyebrow, then I can understand. When new ideas like this pervade the public consciousness it’s easy to be cynical (you have to fight that urge of course, as it helps no one, including yourself to be closed minded). The truth is mindfulness isn’t new. It’s been around for thousands of years.
Renowned sports psychologist Michael Gervais says that elite athletes and coaches are increasingly relying on mental-strength (resilience) to gain competitive advantage, and at the heart of it lies mindfulness. It’s worth noting that whilst mindfulness can for some be put into the category of ‘life-hack’ or ‘self-help’, nutrition, recovery and strength and conditioning were once viewed with cynicism too.
Michael Gervais works with top NFL teams and players (such as Russell Wilson, the Seattle Seahawks star quarter back) and Felix Baumgartner (the chap who free jumped 130,000 feet from the edge of the stratosphere).
Seattle Seahawks Quarterback, Russell Wilson
Michaels mindfulness practice, which aims to help you operate well in high pressure environments, requires a mastery of the mind as well as the technical element of the job. It extends far beyond taking five deep cleansing breathes, although deep breathing is useful in many ways.
For the most part, the individuals Gervais works with like to be in control, but being a little out of control, and it may sound trite to say it, is where the learning takes place. Think of it like a balloon expanding when we breathe into it. As it grows the edges grow thinner. In the centre of the balloon, the comfort zone, we’re super skilled. At the edges is where self-doubt can creep in, “do I have what it takes to do this?”. That’s when resilience is needed.
Felix Baumgartner
We aren't teaching kids and young people the mechanics of confidence, which is self-talk. And there's two basic camps of self-talk: positive productive self-talk, and that more critical biting destructive, negative self-talk.”
Michael Gervais.
So what does Gervais’ mindfulness practice look like:
It begins with awareness – awareness of thoughts, emotions, body sensations and the unfolding environment around us. Practicing this allows an individuals to adjust more effectively when our thoughts and emotions may stand in the way of us performing at our best.
The second tenant is wisdom – this has to be earned, practiced in the same way at awareness. It won’t just happen, in the same way that reading a wise book, does not make you wise. It’s the ability to not only notice a negative thought when it happens, but being able to move from negative to critical (logical) mind to productive. Not naïve optimism, but being able to notice and critically assess how you’re feeling and move past it. This is the element of deeper mindfulness that most people miss according to Gervais.
If it’s not obviously already, to become adept at this, as with anything, it requires deliberate practice. It’s a discipline.
Source: Michael Gervais / British GQ