Arnold Schwarzenegger "Always" thinks like a Champion -You can Too!

“How To Think Like A Champion”

There are few interviews from exceptional people, that illustrate so flawlessly, the process needed to achieve great things than this one with, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Watch, Listen & Do!

The mental part of anyone’s game is always the part that needs the most work and has the greatest opportunity, if improved, to give epic improvements to performance immediately.

Todd Herman

Mental Imagery in Sport and Life - Kinesiology part 111

The ability to form mental images of things or events

By repeatedly calling up images in your mind and rewiring the circuits of your mind toward a realization of those images. The remarkable feature of imagery work is that it can be accompanied by physiological changes.

Experience that resembles perceptual experience, but which occurs in the absence of the appropriate stimuli for the relevant perception.

Involves focusing your mind to visualize yourself in a certain situation and doing well in that situation.
A cognitive psychological skill in which the athlete uses all the senses to create a mental experience of an athletic performance

There’s nothing mystical about mental imagery. Simply put, it’s a visualization exercise that helps not only athletes but anyone who desires increased success and performance. There’s multiple ways to practice it and it can be done in short spurts or for a long duration.

How Mental Imagery Works

When an athlete imagines himself performing to perfection, he is physiologically creating neutral brain patterns that are similar to small tracks engraved in the brain cells. This enables the athlete to perform athletic tasks by mentally practicing those tasks first in his mind. Mental imagery is intended to train the athletes’ mind, thus teaching the muscles to perform exactly how he wants them to perform.

Practical Application of Mental Imagery

It’s true that we move closer to what we focus on. If an athlete imagines missing a shot, or how good the other team is, or even fears injury, it harms his game concentration and affects the outcome. It’s absolutely essential that athletes visualize success and victory.  Steven Balzac, a psychology professor and former nationally ranked fencer says, “If we imagine success, we prepare ourselves for success because that’s what’s in our heads.”

It’s important to remember that athletes use imagery in different ways. Their imagery may not involve just visual images, but sounds, smells or touch. It really depends on the person. Another important aspect of mental imagery is for the athlete to watch and study his sports heroes and imagine that he is making those same shots with precision. Does this mean the athlete will always perform at top level? No…we’re human and we all have bad days on occasion. But visualization and mental imagery increases the chance of increased and sustained success.

Results of Mental Imagery

Of course physical practice is always the best way for an athlete to improve his skill level and race to the top of his game. However, mental imagery is better than no practice at all and, incorporated with physical practice, is the best way to see optimal results.

Continuous studies are always being conducted to determine just how much mental imagery plays into the increased success of athletes. And, for the rest of us, imagining ourselves more successful is never a waste of time if we are also spending equal or more time physically developing our skill set. The time spent in mental imagery is beneficial not only to the athlete but to the business person, the student, the entrepreneur, and anyone else who desires to develop and increase their level of play.

The more mental imagery is studied; more effective techniques can be developed and adapted by athletes…and the rest of us.

 original article by Michelle Hill

NeuroLogical Levels in Sport same in Corporate and Individuals

One of the most useful NLP models for capital “C” coaches is that of NeuroLogical Levels. Both coaching and modeling frequently need to address multiple levels of learning and change in order to be successful. According to the NeuroLogical Levels model (Dilts, 1989, 1990, 1993, 2000), the life of people in any system, and indeed, the life of the system itself, can be described and understood on a number of different levels: environment, behavior, capabilities, values and beliefs, identity and spiritual.


At the most basic level, coaching and modeling must address the environment in which a system and its members act and interact—i.e., when and where the operations and relationships within a system or organization take place. Environmental factors determine the context and constraints under which people operate. An organization’s environment, for instance, is made up of such things as the geographical locations of its operations, the buildings and facilities which define the “work place,” office and factory design, etc. In addition to the influence these environmental factors may have on people within the organization, one can also examine the influence and impact that people within an organization have upon their environment, and what products or creations they bring to the environment.

At another level, we can examine the specific behaviors and actions of a group or individual—i.e., what the person or organization does within the environment. What are the particular patterns of work, interaction or communication? On an organizational level, behaviors may be defined in terms of general procedures. On the individual level, behaviors take the form of specific work routines, working habits or job related activities.
Another level of process involves the strategies, skills and capabilities by which the organization or individual selects and directs actions within their environment—i.e., how they generate and guide their behaviors within a particular context. For an individual, capabilities include cognitive strategies and skills such as learning, memory, decision making and creativity, which facilitate the performance of a particular behavior or task. On an organizational level, capabilities relate to the infrastructures available to support communication, innovation, planning and decision making between members of the organization.

These other levels of process are shaped by values and beliefs, which provide the motivation and guidelines behind the strategies and capabilities used to accomplish behavioral outcomes in the environment—i.e., why people do things the way they do them in a particular time and place. Our values and beliefs provide the reinforcement (motivation and permission) that supports or inhibits particular capabilities and behaviors. Values and beliefs determine how events are given meaning, and are at the core of judgment and culture.

Values and beliefs support the individual’s or organization’s sense of identity—i.e., the who behind the why, how, what, where and when. Identity level processes involve people’s sense of role and mission with respect to their vision and the larger systems of which they are members.

Typically, a mission is defined in terms of the service performed by people in a particular role with respect to others within a larger system. A particular identity or role is expressed in terms of several key values and beliefs, which determine the priorities to be followed by individuals within the role. These, in turn, are supported by a larger range of skills and capabilities, which are required to manifest particular values and beliefs. Effective capabilities produce an even wider set of specific behaviors and actions, which express and adapt values with respect to many particular environmental contexts and conditions

As an individual we are a whole system within a system. As an individual on a sport team or in a corporate office we are whole system within that system. The magic happens when there is congruency which means the neurological levels are aligned. As an Optimal Performance Coach my work involves ensuring there is congruency in this alignment in individual players, teams in sport, coaches, management and in the corporate world.

Intuition

“Let the bird sing without deciphering the song”, wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson.

There is such a thing about too much thinking. We can analyze everything to death. Then we create paralysis through analysis. You can think too much which is something Dante and his guide Virgil. Discovered on their outing to the Inferno. Faith begins, if it begins at all where knowledge leaves off.

Even scientists will admit that they do all the homework they can but eventually rely on an intuitve leap. They call it informed intuition, and though it grows naturally out of periods of dogged rational work-which provides the raw material it needs to go on, the bits of clothing laced with scent-reason, again, only goes so far. Intuition is the last baton carrier. It doesn’t win the race alone, but it’s the one that crosses the finish line.The more practiced it is the less likely it is to get winded at crucial moments.

Intuition has receptors that seem able to hook all manner of passing emotions, like a bus that rolls through downtown picking up passengers. The passengers are not the bus, however, they are merely hitching a ride. Sports psychologist (and former athlete) Susan Jackson, who co-wrote The Flow of Sports with Csikszentmihalyi, puts a more secular spin on the same conclusion.  Though Jackson believes flow can be controllable, she would agree with Cooper that it cannot be achieved on demand.  “However, we can set the stage for flow by firstly being aware of what the flow state is...and then focusing on the factors that facilitate flow for a particular athlete.”

            Jackson’s emphasis on the individual athlete’s flow touches upon the interplay between spirit and an athlete’s emotional life which, in turn, it deeply dependent upon an athlete’s environment, personal beliefs, and shared cultural values.  All contribute their part in creating a space in which the athlete is free to excel.              

 A whole industry of performance gurus claiming to know the one true path to The Zone has sprouted up in the last decade as athletes strive to reach peak performance.  But in my book and documentary we discover there is no one secret formula.  The Zone requires a complex intersection of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual elements that, when attained, create in the athlete a security and confidence to personally identify with excellence.  Pia Nilsson, former European team Solheim Cup captain, sums up our findings when he speaks of Tiger’s female equivalent, Annika Sorenstam: “Annika has given herself permission to be great.  It shocks people, being so bold.  But it’s crucial that you see yourself doing something exceptional, so that when the time comes, you don’t bail out.  Because you feel you belong there, you stay in the zone.”