As Sergio Garcia prepared for yet another attempt to win his first major championship, his soon to be wife Angela Akin handed him a stack of letters. Each one was a hand written note on green paper (symbolizing the green jacket for Master’s winners).
The letters came from friends and family members from Texas all the way to Spain, his home country. The addressed two key points: why they loved him and why they thought they knew he could win.
The injection ...
Continue Reading →Formerly one of the best putters on the PGA tour, Brad Faxon had a success formula that helped him lead the tour in putting average multiple times. Three specific examples of Faxon’s success formula:
When you are part of turning around a program or having one of those inevitable down years, sustaining motivation and a positive attitude can be a challenge. Former three time Super Bowl Champion coach Bill Walsh offered these 10 reminders to keep yourself focused and team motivation high during a losing or sub par year.
1) Concentrate on what will produce results rather than on the results themselves: the process rather than the prize of winning.
2) Exhibit an inner toughness emanating ...
Continue Reading →In the past year, we’ve covered Super Bowl winning Seattle Seahawk http://www.seahawks.com coach Pete Carroll http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki three times in the Championship Performance Coaches Journal https://championshipperform.com/coaching-journal
In this week’s Winning Ways blog, we look at how Carroll worked to get his team mentally ready to compete ‘in the zone’. Carroll has been a long time advocate of sports psychology since his days with the New England Patriots and New York Jets where he worked with Championship Performance Advisory Board ...
Continue Reading →Right after a heartbreaking loss to Alabama, Texas A &M quarterback Johnny Manziel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Manziel talked about his team staying focused on goals such as getting to the SEC Championship by taking things “one game at a time.” That old coaching cliché is great, but successful goal setting is far more systematic and planned out. Here are 5 steps to increase the likelihood of reaching team goals.
1) State the purpose. Complete this sentence. I want to __________.
Examples: I want the ...
Continue Reading →In a recent ESPN documentary http://espn.go.com, former Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt http://www.patsummitt.org was profiled. Having lost in the Final 4 several times, during the run up to her first championship, she was committed to do things differently and leave no stone unturned.
She gathered her team on the day off before the title game and had them all lie on the gym floor. Then she took them through a guided mental imagery exercise where she asked them ...
Continue Reading →Every team could use a few players like Chicago Bulls Joakim Noah, http://www.nba.com/bulls/index_main.html His high-energy style of play raises the enthusiasm level of his entire team. How can you help cultivate an enthusiastic atmosphere on your team?
Here are 5 ideas you can use as a coach to fire up your team’s enthusiasm quotient:
1) Listen for team members when they talk about their own ‘claim to fame.’ When your players talk about proud moments in their athletic history or off ...
Continue Reading →You want to keep spirits up when the pressure to win can to be overwhelming. Here are 4 strategies to keep the team loose and build morale.
1) Have a team movie night or funny television show break at lunch. If most of your team members eat lunch together, you can show old re-runs of comedy shows. Also, consider having a team movie night even during the off-season to build team unity.
2) Set up a “Humor Corner” in the locker room. ...
Continue Reading →With NCAA March Madness upon us, the heavy favorites will be on guard against having over-confidence. Self confidence can be defined as an athlete’s belief that he or she can perform difficult tasks under certain conditions. Overconfidence develops when they misjudge those conditions. They tend to pay less attention to detail, ignore critical information and lack focus both before and during the competition. These combined factors set the stage for losing to an over-matched opponent.
Over confidence appears in three ways. ...
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