What's the Mental Game?

There are two games to every sport. The first game, the physical game, deals with learning the skills you need, getting the level of fitness or conditioning for your sport and making the most of your abilities. To win the physical game you need to learn, practice and perform.

The second game is the mental game. The mental game is how you perform under pressure.

Golfing great Bobby Jones once said, “golf is played on a five-inch course, the distance between your ears.” That's the mental game, the game that deals with pressure. That's the game that lets you do great in practice but not as good in competition. That's the game that, when there's a problem with pressure, shows itself as choking, the yips, slumps, burnout and more.

Winning the Mental Game means performing your best under pressure.

It's all about pressure

There are many reasons people play sports. They may enjoy the physical challenge of learning and performing skills (and doing them well). They may like the mental challenge of learning strategy or outthinking their opponent. Maybe it's all about the drive to win.

If you want to perform well at your sport, you need to be able to perform under pressure. If you want to win, you must perform your BEST under pressure.

What gets in the way?

Everyone is different when it comes to the mental game. Some people perform well in practice but not under pressure. Some are the other way around. There can be a "trigger" that sets people off and ruins their performance. This can be a specific person, team, place. It can be a past experience, an accident or injury or a negative self-fulfilling prophecy. It can be worry, a fear or a phobia. It can get to the point where your sport stops being fun and you don't want to play. Or to the point where the opportunity to play is taken away.

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How does this happen?

It starts with why we react to pressure the way we do. Our reactions are all about what we've learned and how we deal with it. It all comes down to expectation, which leads to HABITS, BELIEFS and BEHAVIORS. These interrelate: we get into habits - we form beliefs - we live behaviors.

Our brain acts like there are two parts of our mind. One is the analytical part, which stores willpower and short term memory. Remember learning to drive a car, ride a bicycle or learn some other skill? It was hard because you had think about and keep track of everything. You were using the analytical part of your mind. Then, one day, it transferred into the other part of your mind, the imagination part, which stores HABITS, BELIEFS and BEHAVIORS. You could do that skill without thinking about it.

This works great when the information that's transferred is good for you.

But what if it's not?

Here's an example. A football player drops a pass during a game. Someone the player looks up to yells at them, tells them that they are an idiot, a loser, they'll never be able to catch a football and have no business being on the team. The player is upset at themselves, being yelled at makes it worse and those destructive statements are taken in and become part of the player's BELIEFS.

The next time a pass is thrown to the player, the player thinks "I know I'm going to drop it" or, worse still, "I HOPE I don't drop it," because they now believe they are a loser, an idiot, and more. And they drop the ball. Now they are forming a HABIT. They get yelled at again, they get more stressed, they drop more balls and it keeps getting worse and worse. They may do well in practice because it doesn't count, but in competition, under pressure, they fall apart. Now, having problems with pressure is part of their BEHAVIOR. And with this example it all started with forming a BELIEF.

Many people try to overcome these problems with pressure through willpower.

They try talking it out, they read articles and books, watch videos, and just about everything else to try to figure out analytically what's going wrong. But remember, willpower is stored in the analytical part of our mind.

HABITS, BELIEFS and BEHAVIORS are stored in the imagination part of the mind.

In the long run, imagination wins over willpower.

For example, if there was a two-foot wide, 24-foot-long plank on the ground, would you walk the length of it for $500? Of course you would, it's a safe and easy thing to do.

BUT, if that plank was between the top floors of two 100-story buildings, would you still walk that plank? Suddenly, it's different. Even if it's a nice, calm day, our imagination goes to work, almost as if there is a voice is whispering into our ear, "What if..."

"I thought my slump would end my sports career hopes, but David helped me get through it and back into the game"