As leagues begin to solidify plans for reopening facilities and scheduling competition most athlete’s need a mental plan to prepare for yet another “new normal.” The time to create individual plans is now. Anticipating the changes they’ll face from playing with few to no fans, wellness distancing guidelines, and disruption to typical pre and post-game routines, below is a holistic approach to assessing and designing realistic mental performance plans.1. Who - who your athletes are – what are their personality traits? For example, labelling a player as extroverted means more than a player enjoying the crowds. Extroversion interacts with other traits to determine how one handles adversity, and is an important consideration when structuring routines.
2. What – what character strengths can be leveraged to transition back into competition mode. Again, generalizing isn’t using the strength intelligently. Looking at how specific traits enhance motivation constructs (control, autonomy, and relatedness) will lead to adaptable ideas that work.
3. How – How have they impacted by the pandemic both personally and professionally? Taking inventory builds a comprehensive profile of what off the field situations might compromise or influence on the field performance.
4. Plan & Implement– design a mental framework transferable to different locations and rebuild pre, during, and post-game routines. Begin repetitions now. Some athletes will be strengthening atrophied mental muscles, and some will need to create new ones. This break is an opportunity to build mental agility without the pressure of competition and work through any kinks. Once facilities open and athletes are back in the training rooms and practicing, having a mental foundation supporting the reentry will reframe the grind into possibilities, motivation, and fun. As a mental skills and performance expert, my goal is to support athletes’ mental health, help them build their psychology of excellence, and provide holistic insights for teams.
I use proprietary machine learning to quickly, and without bias, identify personality traits (think no more assessments!). To learn more about how to execute these efforts for your organization, please email Dafna@BeSportsMinded.com