Improving Mental Skills in Sports: Be a Creek
The Idea
When it comes to improving mental skills in sports, how often do we actually look outside of sports? After all, who we are as players and coaches is ultimately a reflection of who we are as people. I’ve gotten to wrestle with this idea through my visits to Rocky Mountain National Park. As of this year, it will be my seventh year in a row visiting the beautiful mountain range. What’s not to love? You have the 50-80 million-year-old (yes, million) mountains, amazing wildlife living freely right in front of you, and the presence of complete silence. But I find meaning in something considered much less grand: the creeks.
Maybe it’s just me, but as a kid, stumbling upon a creek always filled me with excitement — the sound of the water, the rocks to climb on, the relief of cold water on a hot day. It wasn’t until I sat and observed a creek in the Rockies that I asked myself: what makes the water flow? I’m not necessarily talking about the direction it flows. I am familiar with downhill trajectory. But creeks are hardly straight lines. They bend and twist because of the debris, mainly rocks. If you think I am crazy, then go to a creek and find spots where the creek changes course or slightly lifts because of the ground. You will almost always notice that a rock or set of rocks has caused this.
Stay with me. You have water that is millions of years old successfully carving solid rocks that are also millions of years old. If you and I got into a fight and you showed up with a rock, but I showed up with water cupped in my hands, everyone would bet on you to win. But what happens when you let water loose on a rock over time? Click here for a demo and you’ll (maybe) think I am less crazy.
The Connection
Here’s the claim: we come from nature. And I mean that in the same way that we are copies of our parents. The way we think and behave can be seen all across nature. Isn’t that why we ask our friends if they are “beach or mountain” people? Then our friends usually say something like, “I love the beach because…well…I just feel relaxed there.” Dude — you feel at home.
Let’s get back to sport psychology. If you watched the video above of the water dripping on the rock, then you saw the process of erosion, which is defined as:
The gradual process of the destruction or diminution of something (i.e. the process of water breaking down rocks).
Now let me tell you the definition of persistence:
The firm continuance in a course of action in spite of difficulty or opposition (i.e. like the persistence of water to break down rocks).
The definitions are basically the same. Creeks prove what we always wonder about: is our hard work paying off? I look at a creek that is millions of year old and see the value of small, but calculated steps to continue forward. A creek doesn’t stop when it encounters rocks. It might stall or change course, but it continues to flow. Eventually, the rock has no choice but to give way. The most important part? Once the creek breaks through the rock, it doesn’t look back. It flows in the exact same direction until another obstacle.
“Coach Will, I don’t have millions of years to be a stupid creek.” First of all, we are much more powerful than a creek. We can think, feel, relate, compete, move, and act in many more ways than a creek can. But every single human to ever exist does something that the creek never does: hesitates. A creek never stops to consider if it’s going in the right direction, and it certainly never pauses because it comes across a bigger rock than usual. It goes. It just goes.
The Application - Coaches
Perhaps at the heart of all coaching is the ability to help others break down their obstacles in order to pursue their goals. The analogy of the creek provides us coaches with two facts:
Getting rid of obstacles for athletes is unrealistic. Sports are appealing to the whole world because of the competing that takes place. A person or group of people fight against obstacles, sometimes against all odds, to win. That is the whole point. Removing obstacles for your athletes does not appropriately prepare them for competition. This is why Mikel Arteta — a professional soccer coach in England — purposely introduces obstacles into the routine of his players (read about it here).
Getting rid of obstacles for athletes is unreasonable. I often do an exercise with teams where I have them list all of the things that can impact their performance. The answers are usually similar: training, weather, mindset, opposition ability, coaching, referees, how school went, and etc. I then have them cross out the “uncontrollables” and the list gets very (very) slim. In fact, we are really in control of two things: our approach and response. Trying to get rid of something we can’t control causes us extra anxiety because we are under the illusion that our efforts are useless, when in reality, we were never meant to control things like the weather.
Just like a creek, we want our players to manage the obstacles, not get rid of them. That is true persistence. For example, consider a soccer team who trains outside. When there is heavy rain, how many coaches will try to train inside because it’s uncomfortable to play in the rain? That’s a coach trying to get rid of an obstacle. Lo and behold, the next game is in heavy rain and hasn’t been cancelled. You have to play. That training session in the pouring rain is now a golden opportunity missed. I mentioned earlier that the difference between people and creeks is that we hesitate. If coaches don’t introduce intentional obstacles into training, we are only reinforcing our athletes to hesitate when the obstacle, inevitably, presents itself in a game. If peak performance is like a creek current, we want obstacles to be managed, not a reason to stop. Always forward.
The Application - Athletes
Improving mental skills in sports is a lot like improving any other skill. Imagine you’re learning a new language, like Spanish. You take classes, have a tutor, and maybe an app that teaches you new vocabulary. You watch shows in Spanish and sometimes speak it casually with your friends. You then make the claim that you can speak Spanish. But then you go on a trip to Spain and find yourself stumbling over words and not being able to form coherent sentences. What happened?
The true test of a newly learned skill is implementing that skill where it matters. The safety of making mistakes is no longer there. You either perform or don’t perform. I’ll take the above example even further. Some people go to Spain and come back completely unmotivated to keep learning because they messed up so much. We’ve all done something like this in our own lives. We then have to honestly ask ourselves if this makes us more persistent or not.
This is good and bad news. We now know that the only way to be a persistent person is to be at the tipping point — do I avoid moving forward because it’s difficult now, or do I keep going? And the tipping point is certainly uncomfortable. Continuing to do something that could potentially cause frustration is not easy. Yet, every athlete says they want to be persistent. Well, this is what it takes. Here’s the trick: When you reach the tipping point — much like when a creek hits a bunch of rocks — use the mistakes as fuel. Replace the phrase “I made mistakes” to “I found gaps”. That’s all a mistake is; it shows us how close our effort is to achieving what we want to achieve. And you’ll never know what that gap is unless you try. Mistakes are proof that you’re trying. Persistence is simply trying over, and over, and over, and over again.
Will Martel | St. Louis Certified Mental Performance Consultant | CMPC
Want to work with a CMPC (Certified Mental Performance Consultant) in St. Louis or beyond? I’d love to talk about ways that I can help you, a teammate, your team, or your club. Visit wmcoaching10.com to view my services and contact info. Or, just shoot me a message on Instagram.
