MENTAL WEALTH: The Player is conscious of these recessionary times and our responsibility to encourage pe ople to spend and save wisely. So we've decided that instead of dangling the latest piece of expensive kit and equipment in front of you, COLM O'RIAGAIN is going to contribute to the smart economy by getting you to invest in the most powerful piece of kit - your Brain!
You can track your progress in this most natural of funds without the daily angst of market mayhem. You can be confident that the tried and trusted investment in sporting intelligence is what gives winners that extra few per cent when it really matters.
Your brain executes a number of actions - verbal memory or what the coach said, decision making/flexible thinking, reaction time, spatial memory, hand-eye coordination in a matter of seconds - in just one play - so imagine how hard you need to train your brain for a whole match.
We're going to start with a cost-neutral exercise - something you can do (at least to begin with) all by your self and that could yield more added value than your average Hedge
fund!
We simply want you to review your most recent performance. Reviewing will build confidence, by giving yourself credit for the things you did well.
Find ways to adjust training, preparation or what you did in the match to improve your performance.
Make decisions based on evidence rather than emotion. Winners learn from mistakes. They don't ignore them in case they come back to haunt them and they tend not to explain them away as if they had no part in them. They appraise them by review.
So to start with and get you into the habit, sleep on it before sitting down to review, Think of your last match and pick two obvious things you did well and two that could have been better - log them. Try and answer why they went well and what hindered performance. Now imagine you've just played a match, you gave it a good rattle. As soon as possible after it's over do the important thinking before others have the chance to judge or assess. Work out what went well, what went less well and what must be worked on before the next match.
This self-awareness will then feed into constructive use of discussions with coaches/managers and helps develop future practice. This is nothing more than the good habit of disciplined reflection. Remember that a winning mind believes in the capacity and willingness to be honest and selfreflective. Winners want to know what has worked in the past and have the skill and discipline to recreate that state time and again. They also want to turn negatives into learning points. Once you've embraced the idea you can start to use reviewing to assess and refine your physical and mental preparation for matches.
Try and build a review around the following types of questions:
- How well was I prepared for the match and did I build mental preparation into my plan?
- Was my performance as good as my form in training? If not -why not?
- Did I stick to my plan and what I know works well?
- What would I do differently next time?
- Did I notice some old unhelpful patterns?
- How did I handle pressure or the unexpected?
- What can I do, starting now, to change?
You may want to think about your performances and blame the weather, lament the lack of atmosphere, lampoon the ref and generally believe in the kindliness or otherwise of the
gods. It may help you walk away and wash your hands of it all, but you have a responsibility to your teammates to believe that performance is linked to preparation and that they are not the only ones who need to improve. You may be the one who can create a bit of magic every now and then ,but you could also be the one who 8 times out of 10 takes the wrong shooting option.
Review will help to capture the magic and it might help to make it happen more often.
Have a go. As we said at the start it costs nothing.
