Teaching Young Athletes What to Focus On Is A Game Changer
As a college athlete, I never reached the best version of myself. Being self-aware of the reasons why is crucial to what I do today. It’s a big part of what drives me to write about youth sports, parenting, and pursuing difficult goals. My hope is that reflecting upon my failures can help prevent others from repeating my mistakes.
With this in mind, the main reason I never became the best version of myself as a college athlete was focus. It’s not that I didn’t have focus, it’s that I was focusing on the wrong things. Unquestionably, knowing what to focus on is a game changer for athletes.
Some very smart psychologists in the 1980s (Ames-1984, Dweck-1986, and Nicholls-1989) came up with a simple way to explain what to focus on and why it’s important. Industry experts now commonly call their methodology goal perspective theory. By teaching young athletes this theory, you will give them the basic tools they need to understand how to apply their focus.
The core idea of this theory is simple. Athletes have a tendency to focus their attention in two ways:
- Task Orientation: Focus is on things one has control over such as personal improvement and learning
- Ego Orientation: Focus is on comparing oneself to others such as measuring personal success against the accomplishments of peers
Most athletes have some combination of both areas of focus. However, athletes who lean more towards focusing on comparing themselves to others have negative achievement behaviors such as:
- Giving up too soon (lack of persistence)
- Performing worse than their true ability (debilitated performance)
- Decreasing effort when challenges increase (rescinding effort)
As a result, parents and coaches should actively and intentionally encourage young athletes to focus only on things they control.