Why Some Athletes are More Vulnerable to Distractions
When a good athlete stops getting better, the likely culprit is that something is distracting that athlete. In other words, that athlete has lost focus. Moreover, there is a reason why some athletes are more vulnerable to losing focus than other athletes.
As a college athlete, I didn’t reach 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 serve as a mental skills coach and share so many details of what I do in my writings. My hope is that reflecting upon my failures can help prevent other athletes 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.
What Athletes Must Focus on and Why It’s Important
Some very smart psychologists in the 1980s (Ames-1984, Dweck-1986, and Nicholls-1989) came up with a simple way to explain what athletes must focus on and why it’s important. Industry experts now commonly call their methodology goal perspective theory. By teaching 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 tend 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)
What’s more, these negative achievement behaviors make athletes more vulnerable to outside distractions that will further inhibit their growth as an athlete. As a result, parents and coaches must proactively encourage young athletes to focus only on things they control.
Setting Goals Using Only Things Athlete’s Control
To set goals that are based only on things the athlete controls, the first thing you must do is split all ego goals into three parts.
- First, there is the outcome part of the goal. This is the part the athlete’s ego wants to achieve at the end.
- Second, there is the performance part of the goal. This is the part that defines how the athlete will measure and track the skill level they must reach to achieve the outcome they want.
- Third and finally, there is the process part of the goal. This is the daily / weekly tasks the athlete must complete to execute the process of improving performance.
Next, the athlete must plan out a performance progression. A progression is the process of starting where you are currently, and then gradually layering on new abilities to progress towards where you want to be. You don’t just go from the couch to running a marathon. You must walk before you run, then you must run a mile before you run 5 miles, etc.
To break a goal down into a progression, focus on the processes of making progress. This thought pattern should break down the anatomy of the progression into three characteristics:
- Repeatable: The goal progression must center around a routine the athlete can either do daily, weekly, or something in between.
- Measurable: The goal progression must be one that the athlete can measure and track the performance of a skill with precise numbers that lead to a visual representation of progress over time.
- Systematic: The goal progression must intertwine with an overall system of proven processes that create synergy (running three days a week + doing squats and lunges twice a week + 2 days of rest = process synergy).
Finally, and most importantly the athlete must have someone to hold them accountable to this process. This accountability partner will be the one who helps them keep their focus and avoid distractions. This is the biggest reason why some athletes get better, and some don’t.
Once a progression is set and plans are made to make progress, there is either accountability or there’s not. When there’s not, athletes become vulnerable to distractions. The fact is, when an athlete is in pursuit of an ego goal empowering an accountability partner to kick them in the ass when they fall short of a progress milestone is a game changer.
To that end, a mental skills coach like me is the ideal person to hold an athlete accountable. In my coaching program I work with athletes to:
- Define their goals and split them into outcome, performance, and process goals.
- Develop a realistic plan for progress using process and performance progressions.
- Most importantly, hold them accountable to that plan with daily check-ins and weekly accountability calls.
For more information about my coaching program, contact me here.