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Love them or hate them, Manchester United’s achievements under Sir Alex Ferguson are fantastic examples of performance excellence. From a psychological perspective, what fascinates me is the ability of Sir Alex and his coaching staff to consistently engage their players in learning how to be even better than they already are. However, ‘learner engagement’ is a two-fold process.  It doesn’t matter how engaging the coaches’ learning sessions are, if the players don’t take it upon themselves to engage in the sessions, then learning will not occur.  Therefore, there is an onus on both the teacher and learner to participate in ‘learner engagement’. 

Reflecting on Manchester United’s achievements, on my visit to Cramlington Learning Village and on the Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools’ Performance Skills Programmes, the importance of educating our students how to engage in their learning has significantly been reinforced. Encouragingly, the first set of results from our pilot GCSE Performance Skills Programme showed that boys were able to increase their learner engagement levels, both inside and outside of the classroom, by an average of 30%. These increased levels of learner engagement occurred after only eight 30min sessions which focused on learning how to use The Performance Cycle.  

Jon Finn

The Haberdashers’ Monmouth Sport Psychology Fellow

As one of Britain’s most talented young athletes, our hearts went out to Rory McIlroy during his spectacular defeat at this year’s Masters Golf Tournament. Whilst leading the tournament going into the back 9, McIlroy quickly blew his chances of winning by dropping six shots over three holes. McIlroy’s post-competition interviews concluded that his catastrophic performance was the result of his mind focusing too much on what had already happened, and what might happen, as opposed to simply focusing on the process of making one good shot at a time.   

With GCSE and A Level exams rapidly approaching, it is vitally important for students to stay focused and concentrate on the ‘controllables’. One such controllable is revision. An important part of maximising revision time will be for students to set ‘process goals’. These goals should relate to:

1)      When revision will be completed

2)      Where it will be completed

3)      How long a revision session will last

4)      How the student needs to feel emotionally before they start to get the best our of their revision time

5)      How the success of revision sessions will be assessed    

Jon Finn

The Haberdashers’ Monmouth Sport Psychology Fellow    

The correlation between tiredness and stress is universal.  As the end of a busy Lent Term approaches, and people limp towards the Easter holidays, stress levels are inevitability on the increase. Stress management is often helped by understanding the mechanics of the stress process.

Stress often occurs when there is a mismatch between an individual’s expectations and the reality of the situation.  Psychologists refer to this as the Model of Global and Situational Meaning.  Global meaning is derived from an individual’s goals, beliefs and values.  For example, a global meaning system might be based around a belief that hard work will be recognised and rewarded.  In contrast, situational meaning emerges when you assess what is actually happening.  If praise is not received for hard work, there is a mismatch between what is happening in the moment (situational meaning), versus what you expected to be happening (global meaning). This mismatch will result in stress. One way to begin realigning your meaning systems and thereby reduce stress levels, is to find your own positives in situations and accentuate them. Click here to read the Fuelling Resilience blog again.

Jon Finn

The Haberdashers’ Monmouth Sport Psychology Fellow    

www.performingbeyondpotential.com

www.pre-shot.co.uk

As London 2012 rapidly approaches so does the chance for Great Britain’s rowers to win more Olympic medals. One of the GB crews was training on the Thames yesterday, where HMSG and Monmouth School pupils were also competing in the 2011 Schools’ Head Competition. The Championship Course, the famous venue of The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, provided our students with a platform to test themselves again the best school crews in the country, and bring an official end to their winter training.

In the aftermath of successful performances from all the Monmouth crews, I began to think about team cohesion. Theoretically, team cohesion describes a dynamic process which is reflected in the tendency to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of goals and objectives.  The relationship between performance and cohesion has attracted much theoretical attention.  Research suggests that the effect of performance on cohesiveness is stronger than the effect of cohesiveness on performance. That is to say, performance may facilitate cohesion more than cohesion can facilitate performance.

I have no doubt that the cohesion levels within our crews will have been bolstered greatly by yesterday’s performances, laying the foundations for a successful summer season.

Jon Finn

Imagery

High performing individuals share many similar characteristics. One of those characteristics is the ability to generate clear and controllable images, or pictures, in their mind. One fierce proponent of imagery was the world’s most successful golfer to date, and winner of 18 major championships, Jack Nicklaus. Before every shot Nicklaus played, he would go the ‘movies in his head’ and see the shot that he wanted to make in reverse. First he would see where he wanted the ball to finish, nice and white, and sitting up high on the green grass. Then he would see the ball travelling there. And finally he would see himself making the kind of swing that would make this shot a reality.  

In almost every element of my work at the schools I have been encouraging others to engage in imagery, and purposefully practice using this skill on a day to day basis. If you would like to find out more about imagery, and how you can use it to begin learning new skills, managing your confidence, concentration, anxiety and motivation levels please come along to our Imagery Workshop:

4.15pm Wednesday 17^th March at HMSG as part of the National Brain Awareness Week.

Jon Finn

Britain’s Luke Donald won golf’s WGC Match Play Championship in Arizona this week, pocketing £864, 838 in the process. Donald described this victory as a ‘monkey off his back’ due to the time it has taken him to win a tournament in the USA.  Although Donald has fantastic golf skills, it has been his inability to perform at his best when it counts that has let him down in the past. This may be because Donald has not spent as many hours practising his psychological performance skills (anxiety management, concentration, confidence, motivation) as he has practising his physical golf skills, and if he had, wins would have occurred much sooner. However, as psychological performance skills are far less tangible than physical golf skills, this would be understandable.   

This week, we launched two projects at Monmouth School to help our boys purposefully practise their performance skills in the classroom. These pilot sessions are initially aimed at our GCSE and Year 7 boys, and will endeavour to promote the following behaviours:

1) Excellent Anxiety Management Skills

2) Excellent Concentration Skills

3) Excellent Confidence Skills

4) Excellent Motivation Skills

We only have 10, 000 hours to go!

Jon Finn

The 2011 Six Nation’s Tournament will begin in earnest when the referee’s whistle is blown at 7.45pm on Friday in Cardiff to initiate Wales v England. However, such formalities where overlooked last week when Warren Gatland suggested that Dylan Hartely, one of England’s hookers, was liable to ‘crack under pressure’ during his lineout duties. This was the first of many psychological battles that will take place before 7.45pm on Friday, but which team is the most likely to crack.

The scientific literature would argue that Gatland’s own players would be more liable to crack under pressure if the many psychological disadvantages of playing at home prevail. The high expectations of Welsh supporters, including the press, fans in the stadium, and players’ families may prove to have a negative psychological effect on the teams’ performance. This type of underperformance would occur during key closed game moments, and be defined as, ‘performing poorly in spite of high motivation and incentives for successes.’ However, where the home advantage is likely to occur is in favourable attacking decisions given by the referee to the home team, or so the research would have us believe. Whoever the victor, a cracking game awaits.

Jon Finn

The Haberdashers’ Sport Psychology Fellow    

www.performingbeyondpotential.com

www.pre-shot.co.uk

Red Rum was the first and only horse to win the Grand National on three separate occasions, a race which is arguably the most gruelling long-distance event in the world of sport.  The irony of this is that Red Rum was genetically bred to win sprints, and not long distance events.  In fact horse racing, debatably the most genetically advanced of all sports, only produces champions through genetically-driven breeding programmes about 10% of the time. This brings to fore the ‘nature versus nurture’ argument, and how someone’s current performance does not necessarily reflect their capacity to develop.

Academic literature is moving rapidly away from the idea that current performance levels (talent identification) are related to future performance levels (talent development).  This means that students who are deemed to be talented now, may not necessarily be talented in the future. 50% of the skills needed to be a future champion are thought to be psychological, including, how well individuals are able to motivate themselves; manage their confidence, control their concentration; and regulate their anxiety levels. Profiling psychological potential might be a more effective way to identify talent than focusing on current performance.   

Jon Finn

Not a day goes by where under performance is not reported within the popular press. Whether it is our sporting heroes, political leaders or groups of professionals, British culture seems to thrive in pointing out when others are not performing as well as expected. Which ever walk of life you are in, under performance can often be linked back to problems associated with the psychological constructs of confidence, motivation, concentration and anxiety, or what I like to term ‘The Big Four’. Unfortunately we are not purposely taught how manage these psychological constructs, and our ability to do so successfully therefore seems to be left to chance.

Purposefully teaching our students to manage The Big Four would seem to be a sensible idea. With this in mind one of the INSET workshops at HMSG focused on helping our students to manage The Big Four in the classroom. The session centred on one simple question, ‘what confidence, motivation, concentration, and anxiety problems do your students experience in the classroom?’ I would like to extend this question to anyone who reads this blog, as it would be fantastic to hear or read about your Big Four classroom experiences.

 Jon Finn

I took away many ideas from Professor Jim McKenna’s superb INSET Day Lecture. One of the most salient points was that we must work extra hard as teachers and coaches to help our students and athletes find the positives in any given situation. The research is clearly showing us that people who can find positives during difficult times are more likely to flourish in life than those who can not. The negatives in our lives are often all too easy to identify, whereas finding positives can be a little like trying to catch butterflies with only our bare hands.

I have been using personal strengths as a vehicle to help some of my students identify the positives in their lives on a day-to-day basis. Very simply, I have asked the students to list their top five strengths in rank order, and then provide an example of how they have used each of their strengths in the past.  I have then suggested that they make a note each day as to how they are using their strengths. So the challenge for you is this: write down how you have used one of your strengths today?

Jon Finn

The Haberdashers’ Sport Psychology Fellow

www.performingbeyondpotential.com

www.pre-shot.co.uk