Thanks to Ross Williams for this piece. He posed a few challenging questions to Tim Goodenough, who works as a mental coach with the Sharks.
There is an expectation that finals and derby’s are going to be low scoring affairs, regardless of what level you are playing at. Typically they are. Teams play more defensively, and normally the team that manages the pressure better, has the edge. Both teams will normally up the intensity in the way they play, and the players will be more hyped or psyched.The challenge here is that sometimes there is too much hype, too much psych and that extra adrenaline starts to affect muscle co-ordination and the decisions making skills of the players (and sometimes even the coaches).
In any team there will be a group of players that play best when they have a relatively high level of tension, and a group who plays best when there is relatively low level of tension. Many high tension players want the butterflies in the stomach; they want to feel pumped, whereas for many low tension players it is different. They know they are in for a big game, but want to feel relaxed and calm.
The challenge here is that a coach will normally speak to his team in a specific way. If he was high tension, he would normally hype the guys up, “There is no friendship today boys, just winners and losers! We are the winners!” “This is it! This is what our whole season has been about, this one game!” and if he was low tension and wanted to calm the players down he might say, “Boys, we need to do today what we have done all season, don’t worry about who you are playing, when you play your game the results will look after themselves.”
So any singular approach will only be effective for a portion of the players. The other problems is that with it being an important match, the players themselves, fans, friends, administrators and family would often add to the tension mix by adding their comments and ideas. All this extra commentary means that your change room will have players that arrive differently to what they normally do – their behaviour will start to indicate that the pressure has affected them.
If it is a big game, I am first checking for if they players truly believe they can win – sometimes it takes time (and some coaching work) for a side to get their minds around winning a big trophy, a big game, a championship if they haven’t done it before. As I spoke about in a previous article, most teams look to the past to decide what they can do in the present. If that is the case I use team coaching techniques to help the players integrate the belief that they can win today.
If I am involved with the team during the week, it is about insuring the intensity in practise is there, as well as the focus and the bigger meaning of “we are preparing ourselves 100% for the challenge ahead.” Once I get into the locker room before the game, if I have that relationship with the coach that he wants me to speak, I am going for 3 things.
Firstly does this team, right now, believe they can win? If not, I speak to that. Secondly, what does this game mean to the team? I tell the story how there are 2 types of players in a final, firstly there is one that is scared to make a mistake, scared of disappointing his friends and team-mates, and the second that gives his everything and leaves no questions unasked on the field. He leaves no regrets. I then talk about passion for the game of rugby, the excitement of playing, what it means and get the players to think about what it means to them. Then, once they have a pull motivation for playing (what they want to experience), rather than a push motivation (don’t stuff up, don’t fail, etc) The third and final thing I do is to ask them to focus on the challenge.
Challenge is a useful word as it incorporates high and low tension players nicely. “As you think of the challenge facing you today, remember the last time you were awesome at facing a challenge on the rugby field, what did you feel like? What did that movie look like? What did you say to yourself and your team-mates?” This helps the players recreate their ideal playing state for challenge (whether they are high or low tension), and then I use some NLP techniques to further develop the state and enhance it. During this time I always talk about giving up the idea of being perfect, as perfection doesn’t allow for mistakes … however greatness does. Greatness is defined not just by your effort, but also by your recovery. Can you be great to yourselves and your team-mates when someone makes a mistake? That is the challenge? Are you guys ready for it?
TG
Â
- Ross Williams says:
Hi Tim
I find this article very intriguing as I coach at one of the rugby schools in the Western Cape who are predominately english speaking. I find that for the last couple of years our teams from 1st down to u14 battle when they play the more successful afrikaans teams ect, but are only able to turn the passion on when they play traditional english rivals.
The players are good enough to beat them, however their mindset is so bad that I can see they have lost the match even before they have played. Speaking to some players and having been a player at the school myself recently, I know that the entire schools mindset is one of failure.
When kids are doing fitness drills you hear them shouting “”C’mon we are only losing by 5″” , however to my mind a shout of “”C’MON we are only winning by two”" would be better and indicative of the winning mindset.
Being in the First XV changeroom a few years back I remember the room being so stressful and anxious that the team as well as my own performance suffered. This was as you say the fear of failure, the fear of a dropped pass ect.
Does the attitude of the firsts cause this mindset of an entire school or is it just the coaches who do not understand the influence of the mind over the performance of the body?
How do you change the mindset of an entire school?
Hope you can give some insight to this rather large problem.
- TG says:
Hi Ross
Thanks for the comments and questions.
What you are describing as the mindset of the school, is what is sometimes called institutional thinking. Basically how “we” (collectively as a group, team or school) think about something. This happens to most rugby teams, and often to schools. It is this kind of thinking that creates “bogey” sides, this kind of thinking that makes one team a good touring team, and another poor tourists, and this kind of thinking that people identify with a style of rugby for a certain team.
For example the Sharks have a very good touring success rate in New Zealand, but incredibly poor in Australia. The Springboks up until very recently hadn’t beaten NZ in NZ for around 10 years – even though they have been desperately close several times. Institutional thinking.
The old fashioned way to deal with this is to wait for the ‘fluke’ result, the result or performance that bucks the trend, and as a coach make a big deal of it. “Don’t you boys ever think we can’t beat these guys again – we have just done it! We will do it again!” Obviously this ‘fluke’ result means that the team has to be exceptional to not only overcome the challenge, but also to overcome their own limiting assumptions about what is possible for them. This happens rarely, and so typically institutional thinking can linger for some time.
At a school, due to the hierarchical nature of coaches and students and the 1st team and u14 team the 1st team coach and 1st team has a massive opportunity to influence the thinking of the other sides. However since usually the 1st team play last, they will be under even more pressure if all the other side’s loose first. So if I were you I would want to work with each ‘A’ side coach, to speak to his team. That way, at least a few sides would have performed better (and maybe even won) before the 1st team match.
How you shift the beliefs that are the foundation of institutional thinking is a bit challenging, hence the reason why I have a job and have had to go through intensive training to do it; however I will try to describe a process that you could follow that would make a difference. Hopefully that difference is enough.
The structure of the conversations that are needed is as specified in the article above.
First . Ask the players who is expected to win? Then ask them if the other side is expected to win, who is the pressure on? What opportunities does that give us? Once they transfer pressure off themselves, then you need to fill that gap in with the excitement and passion of playing rugby – to be the first team that took on this challenge at this school – and had fun with it!
Second. Ask the players to think about how they represent this opposition side in their mind. They will probably share stories of mean looking big players that scare them. Ask them to double the height of the players in their mind, to see how that affects them. They will probably tell you they are even more scarier! Now ask them to halve the height of these players, to half their original side – and then ask them how they feel. Once they understand that they can change their own representation to get their own fear or excitement – ask them to adjust the height of their opposition in their minds to what is just right for them
Thirdly. Explain the story of the 2 different types of players who play derby games, and ask them to give it their everything
Fourth. Ask them to vividly imagine walking off the pitch after the game having won, the feeling, the smell of the jersey, the sounds of the cheers, the looks on their team-mates faces. Once they have got that movie vividly in place, ask them what that player in that movie – who has just won- would say to the player sitting now in the change room. What advice would that player give you now? And what are you going to do with that advice? Instinctively we know what we need to do to be successful, just fear and doubt sometimes gets in the way. This is a way to access that instinctive success formula.
