Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

I teach my clients that playing sports is 100% mental. This doesn’t mean physical skills are not important. This just means that an athlete’s physical skills are only as good as their mental skills. So, if you take away any given mental skill from an athlete this will decrease that athlete’s ability to execute physical skills. Similarly, if you add to an athlete’s mental skills, this will increase that athlete’s ability to execute physical skills.

The best example of this is the mental skill of intensity. Moreover, the NBA playoffs provides a perfect lesson on how intensity elevates an athlete from good to great, and vice versa. Every fan of the NBA knows the playoffs are a different level of intensity than the regular season.

It’s to the point now where NBA players barely even care about the regular season as long as their team makes the playoffs. Therefore, NBA players learn to master turning on and off their intensity depending on the circumstances of the game.

A classic example of this comes in the form of an ESPN headline highlighting the Boston Celtics comeback win over the Milwaukee Bucks last night. This is a case study all athletes can learn from.

Triggered by Giannis Antetokounmpo, Al Horford scores playoff career-high 30 points to rescue Boston Celtics in Game 4

In this article, ESPN quotes Boston Celtics center Al Horford in saying that:

“I didn’t make out what he said, but the way he looked at me didn’t sit well with me,” Horford said. “That got me going.”

In other words, Al Horford used something another player did to him to trigger an increase in his intensity. This trigger fueled the comeback by propelling him to score a playoff career high of 30 points at age 35. Obviously, Horford is late in his career and if he was more self-aware about how to trigger his intensity, he would have scored 30 points in the playoffs well before last night. Indeed, this is the lesson athletes must learn if they want to elevate themselves from good to great before they reach the twilight of their career.

The Lesson on Triggering Intensity

Intensity is a multidimensional mental state that encompasses stress, anxiety, relaxation, pressure, worry, nervousness, and energy. In general, the way intensity works is that as it increases performance improves, to a point. Once that point is reached performance decreases with more intensity.

This important observation was first made by psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John Dillingham Dodson in 1908. More recent research shows that not only does intensity have a peak that turns performance negative thereafter, but this peak is also variable. This is what makes intensity unique. A given level of intensity is not always good or bad. Any given level of intensity could drive peak performance or poor performance depending on the circumstances. In addition, each athlete has an optimal level of intensity unique to both their individual personality and their circumstances.

Athletes must have the right amount of intensity to perform their best. Too little or too much will decrease performance. Therefore, to elevate from good to great consistently, athletes must not only learn their optimal intensity level, but they must also practice triggering it.

In Al Horford’s case, he doesn’t play with that same amount of intensity that he did last night each game. Horford has always been a good player, but never great. The great players trigger their optimal intensity routinely. For example, Michael Jordan recently became a meme for sharing in his documentary The Last Dance that he takes everything personal, and this is what triggers his intensity.

Jordan was a master of optimizing intensity throughout his career using this method. However, every athlete’s trigger will not be like Jordan’s. This is why self-awareness is the key to elevating from good to great.

Only you can know how to trigger your optimal intensity. Without self-awareness, you are leaving your ability to be at your best to luck and as the saying goes, luck is not a strategy.