Penalty taking at the World Cup

Now that the World Cup is nearly upon us, the main topic I am asking to comment on from the media is the art of penalty taking. Why, for instance, are England so bad at taking penalties and Germany so good at it?

A lot of commentators will refer to penalties as being a lottery, but it is far less so than many think. Although skill plays an important role in penalty taking, mental approach seems to have a far bigger impact and, in a nutshell, we tend to get what we expect. Germany has developed a cultural belief that they are good at penalties; this then has an impact their attitude when it comes to a penalty shoot out. England, however, has developed a belief that they are no good at penalties and this is also reflected in their attitude when it comes to a shoot out. If you go back to 2006 and the penalty shoot out against Portugal, England should have been delighted to take them to penalties. It was England, after all, who had to finish out the game with only 10 men. However, each one of England's penalty takers looked petrified. They walked from the centre circle looking as if they were on their way to their own execution. At the same time, their team mates were looking down at the ground, shaking their heads. Contrast this with Ronaldo when he went to take his penalty; his head was up, his shoulders thrust backwards as he marched purposefully towards the penalty area. If you watch Fabio Grosso as he walked up to take the penalty that would win the World Cup for Italy, he has a smile on his face. For these two men, taking a penalty is seen as an opportunity not a threat.

Matthew Le Tissier, who had a record of scoring 48 out 49 penalties during his career, believes that his main reason for success was that he loved taking penalties. When you love doing something you tend to focus on what you can do. When you hate doing something, you tend to focus on what you fear may happen. As we tend to get more of what we focus on, it makes sense that a positive penalty taker is far more likely to score.

All the England players need to do, therefore, is learn to love taking penalties. Simple!

Andy Barton
Wider Vision Ltd - Specialists in Mental Performance Training for Sport

Craig Bellamy Foundation

When you think of Craig Bellamy, some of you may consider him in less than glowing terms. What some of you may not know is that he has invested a huge amount of his own time and money (over £1 million) into introducing football to the children of Sierra Leone. He is single-handedly the biggest funder of sport in this country. He has now got over 1600 kids playing football and he is funding the training of coaches, with a view of having more trained coaches in Sierra Leone than any other African country. One of the rules of playing is that the children must attend school and for those involved, school attendance has risen from an average 30% to over 80%. Not only that, children can increase the goal difference of the team by answering correctly questions about such issues as HIV after a match.

This is a fantastic illustration of an individual who thrives on having a sense of purpose. It has made him a more rounded individual (albeit still a vociferous one on the pitch) and getting a perspective that there are more important things than football (apologies to Bill Shankly!), I believe, has made him an even better player.

You can find out more at http://www.craigbellamyfoundation.org/

Why hypnosis is beneficial to sport

Hypnosis has been widely used in sport since the 1950s. It has been widely documented that the Soviet team took no fewer than eleven hypnotherapists to the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956. Since this time a many of the world's leading sports performers have used hypnosis to improve their mental approach. Tiger Woods has used hypnosis from a very early age and once stated that “hypnosis is inherent in everything I do now”.

In a sense, any sports performer who uses mental rehearsal to prepare for competition has used hypnosis as, to mentally rehearse an event, you have to take on a trance state.

It is highly significant that it has been found that there is a correlation between hypnosis and the ‘zone’ state that sports performers refer to when they are playing to their highest level. When sports performers are in the zone, their predominant brainwaves are Alpha brainwaves which are at a frequency of between 8-12Hz (cycles per second), the same brain state that most people access when they enter a state of light trance. Many sports performers describe the zone as being in a kind of bubble, where everything is easy and effortless, time seems to slow down and it is almost as if some other force has taken over their body. These are all examples of deep trance phenomena associated with hypnosis.

The ability to enter trance is therefore an extremely useful feature of peak performance and athletes need to train their ability to enter trance states to improve their mental ability in the same way that they need to train their muscles to enhance their strength and endurance. The most successful athletes are the ones who can put themselves into the most effective trance to perform.

Andy Barton
The Sporting Mind - Mental Training for Sport

The power of lightening up

One thing that sports performers very often start to do when they get to a certain level is take their sport too seriously. The thinking behind this tends to be that if they want to get to a very high level, they have to take it seriously. Now, I'm not saying that sport shouldn't be important and I'm not saying that sports performers shouldn't strive to reach a high level - far from it. What I am saying is that taking sport too seriously (or anything for that matter) can have a real impact on performance. One thing it does, for instance, is it affects our physiology. When we take things too seriously, we tend to frown more and become more inward looking. The mere act of frowning will then impact on other muscles throughout our bodies and will also have a significant impact on how we think and feel. You can test this out for yourself. Put a frown on your face for a couple of minutes and notice how it affects your mood. Then put a big smile on your face and notice the difference. When we smile we increase the levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin which makes us feel happier and also reduces levels of anxiety. It is no coincidence that you are seeing more sports performers smiling when they are in competition. It is a noticeable change in the Chelsea team who seemed to have been playing with a smile on their faces since Carlo Ancelotti became coach (notably bringing with him the eminent psychologist Bruno Demichelis). Even Nicolas Anelka has been smiling. You may have noticed that Andy Murray has lightened up over the last year or so, as has Padraig Harrington with great results. The likes of Usain Bolt, Ronaldinho, Tom Watson and Luke Donald seem to have always performed with a smile on their faces. So if you want to improve your performance, first of all, make a commitment to lighten up, smile and enjoy yourself.

Andy Barton
The Sporting Mind - Mental Training for Sport

WAGS

Fabio Capello has stated that Wives and Girlfriends will be able to meet up with the players for one day after each match and not at any other time during the World Cup. This seems to me to be a very sensible approach after the problems from the 2006 World Cup, although I wouldn't always suggest this is the best option.

One thing a player needs when away from home is some sort of normality, so usually the familiar face of a loved one at the end of the day can serve to keep the player grounded. It can also keep the player's mind off their performance, which can lead to over-analysing on occasions. In many sports being surrounded by family when touring is encouraged. Unfortunately, with the huge hype surrounding the World Cup there is no such thing as normality and the media interest in the WAGs only serves to heighten this fact.

In Capello's favour is the fact that he has created a winning mentality in his team. When a team respects and believes in the coach it is very unlikely there will be any dissent from their ranks. We just have to hope that the WAGs are on the same page and keep a low profile throughout the tournament. Something tells me it is a vain hope!

Andy Barton
The Sporting Mind - Mental Training for Sport

Tim Henman

During Wimbledon fortnight I tend to get a lot of interview requests from the media regarding the mental side of tennis. One of the recurring topics is the question of what the media perceive to be Tim Henman’s failure.

Love him or not, Tim Henman was Britain’s most successful tennis player for decades. He won 11 World ATP tournaments, including the Paris Masters, reached the Semi-Finals at Wimbledon four times, once at the French Open and once at the US Open and ranked as high as number four in the World.

If that is considered failure, it’s a wonder why anyone would want to aim to be at the top of their sport.

Andy Barton
The Sporting Mind - Mental Training for Sport

Insane Golf

A lot of golfers wonder why it is that they spend years and years playing the game, spend a fortune on the latest equipment, spend hours and hours on the driving range, have countless lessons with a swing coach and dedicate the rest of their time analysing and thinking about their game and yet, more often than not, find that they still get the same results they’d been getting for years - or may even get worse.

If you can recognise this in yourself, you may want to ask yourself whether you are doing anything differently to what you have done in the past to change your game. We are by nature creatures of habit. We essentially repeat patterns of behaviour without thinking. So a golfer will turn up at the driving range, get 100 balls and hit them one after another without putting any real thought into it or having any real purpose in mind. These people are often working on the erroneous principle that ‘practice makes perfect’. They feel that the mere effort of turning up to practice and hit balls is going to improve their play. However, because they tend to practise the same way every time, they are only reinforcing what they have already learned, including all their bad habits. Only perfect practice makes perfect.

It was Einstein who defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. If you want to improve, you must start doing things differently. Set yourself new challenges, put more effort into each shot, make your targets more defined, refine your pre-shot routine (if you haven’t got one yet, get one now), mentally rehearse how it would be to be the player you would like to be (we’ll discuss the power of mental rehearsal in more detail in a future blog), play with people you don't normally play with – just do something different. And if it works, keep doing it! Otherwise you are going to be stuck playing insane golf.

Andy Barton
The Sporting Mind - Mental Training for Sport