Peak Performance Journey

What I would like to do is to use this Blog to take you on a journey through one year as a peak performance coach and write a weekly format on my case studies with the client’s approval and Emails you may send.

I would like to introduce you into the four pronged attack of Sports Psychology using techniques from N.L.P. Peak Performance, Emotional Energies such as E.F.T & T.F.T. and also how to protect yourself from Energy Vampires.(This sounds like I must be a crackpot, but please stay with me, once you know what to look for you will know several). I don’t know where this journey is going to go but I hope people will find many answers to their problems especially those of you thinking you are the only one with your particular problem.

LET THE JOURNEY BEGIN

One of the downfalls of becoming a sports psychologist is the stigmatisation of the title – One sportsman to a fellow sportsman “Oh by the way I have been to see a sports psychologist” reply “Why what is wrong with you?”

I like to think of myself as a peak performance coach which if you repeated the above sentence with the words peak performance coach I don’t think I would get the same reply. I am not advocating that all sports psychologists change their title but for the general public to change their concept of what a sports psychologist does.

Control your own “thoughts” – What is nervous Emotion
Your thinking controls your Emotions and your Emotion controls your performance. If you have the right thoughts you will have the correct Emotions and thereby you are going to have the right performance.

You are a player but you are not prepared for the game or match you are about to play. You don’t feel confident, that is a thought. You become nervous – that is an Emotion – you are going to tighten up which will affect your performance.

Everyone learns skills but what do we call skills. Is it jumping over a six foot pole swimming 100 metres or running a mile? A old man can live to be ninety years old and not be able to read or write and by adjusting his strategies even his close friends may never know that they can’t read or write. I forgot my glasses, is a good way out even though they don’t wear them. Why would I make this analogy? Well is a skill that this gentleman as and he does it well.

Seeing one my interests is Billiards & Snooker I will use three examples. A peak performance coach PPC cannot make you a top billiard/ snooker player instantly, you have to know the correct shot to go for, at the correct speed or strength. You also have to have a fairly good cue action (technique) along with a fair knowledge of the game you are playing – rules etc.

A PPC can even improve even the very top players by helping control their thoughts. Example one, Steve Davis made a remark in the 2009 world snooker championship about Stephen Hendry’s cue. Steve said “I can’t understand Hendry deciding to play in the world championship with a cue he as only had for three weeks”; even though Hendry made a 147 with that cue after only a couple of days after he first acquired it.

If Stephen Hendry herd this remark by Davis this could start the negative thought process in Hendry’s head, had he made the right decision on using this new cue.
It is what that person’s values and beliefs make of this statement subconsciously. A top PPC will steer his client away from these values and beliefs. The same can be said for an E.F.T practitioner who will help with the emotions which we all develop over time. Let me give second example, quite common in the Billiard world. I said to a player the other day “I see you lost to Joe Blogs again” (I know I shouldn’t have said this because it will give him the negative affirmation). He replied “I don’t like playing him because he plays all the wrong shots; he plays snooker billiards potting the red 12 to 14 times off the spots”. What is wrong here is that this player’s values and beliefs are being upset, causing an emotion from his opponents style of play. The third example when Ronnie O’ Sullivan played left handed against Peter Ebdon. (Peter thought it was disrespectful) Both the first billiard player and Peter Ebdon had a thought, this caused an Emotion which disrupted the energy system of the body and subsequently altered these players’ performances. Both were not “happy bunnies”. The answer was to alter those two players mind set with their values & beliefs. Getting the help of an E.F.T practitioner will show you how. I will be using E.F.T. quite a lot over the next year, and this will be great fun.

Last week I watched the 2010 Three Cushion Masters Competition. One of the commentators was Clive Everton and one of his remarks was that even though it was a 10 foot table not one player throughout had used the rest. All of the players could cue equally with their left and right hands. I can bet not one of these players had a negative thought on this issue, and subsequently it did not alter their performance.
E.F.T has not been used much in sport in this country, mainly because sport psychology courses don’t cover it. My introduction was with Gary Craig; he outlined on his teaching DVD’s what a tremendous impact EFT would have on sports (teams and individuals). Steve Wells (who was my peak performance tutor) said he had very good results using EFT in sports helping players gain empowering beliefs. When I decided to try and improve myself in coaching techniques I looked on the internet and on Amazon books. One name came up time and time again and that was Patrick J. Cohn PH.D, He is based in ORLANDO U.S.A. and I will be using some of his ideas.

The reason I became interested in Peak Performance in sport was through my involvement with coaching over the years in football, snooker and billiards. I also played many other sports boxing, judo, karate (Karate Kid is one of my favourite movies) golf, cricket, plus flat and crown green bowls. I obviously meet many sportsmen & women through my business, I often ask the question what makes a top sports person nine out of ten answer “the six inches between your ears”. I have then tried to get a percentage the mind plays in their sports and usually this average is 55% to 65% however the answer in golf is 80% to 90%. I then thought of my coaching mentors Jackie Charlton of Leeds United and Gerry Murphy of Bradley Rangers (later of Huddersfield Town FC academy) Leslie Driffield (Billiards) Jack Karnhem and Terry Griffiths (Snooker and all coaching techniques). So then if I was using technique alone the maximum I could attain with that person out of 100% would be 45%. This is why I feel if we don’t coach the mind we are only getting half way to the solution.

I first started studying NLP (Neuron. Linguistic Programming) this was developed by Richard Bandler and John Grunder. Some people call NLP the brain’s Highway Code. Just think of the chaos if we didn’t have a Highway Code. I was very lucky in finding a tutor in NLP Helen Emms who in turn was tutored by David Shepherd who in turn was tutored by Richard Bandler. David went on to form his own company Performance Partnership. I say I was lucky because Helen was willing to run the first courses in NLP on sport. Unbelievably there was only myself and another guy Matt on this first course, at this time NLP was only taken by the business community – mostly management level. With the growth of the internet people now take NLP courses for self development. After studying over 300 hours and also written examinations I passed my Masters in NLP and NLP sport and I thank Helen for all this help. Helen has written her own book on Tennis entitled “Achieving Peak Performance”. It is a must read for all people wishing to better understand peak performance and you don’t have to play tennis as most of the techniques Helen uses can be adapted to most other sports.