Mental Skills Archives - Page 3 of 9 - The Sport Information Resource Centre

Research shows self-compassionate athletes rehabilitating from injury tend to be more mentally tough, perceive having more coping resources, and experience less self-criticism. In fact, self-compassion might allow injured athletes to access a healthier version of mental toughness, characterized by acceptance and wise actions, as opposed to a mental toughness characterized by making poor decisions to push through injury in unhealthy ways.

If you have been involved in the coaching or administrative side of competitive sport, chances are you have seen athletes experience emotionally difficult setbacks. These setbacks can range from devastating performance failures (e.g., “choking” during an important competition), to facing harsh, negative evaluations by others (e.g., spectators, teammates, competitors, parents) and/or themselves (the self-critic is often very cruel). For some athletes, these types of setbacks can offer an opportunity for personal growth. For others, without sufficient coping resources, setbacks can negatively impact athletes’ wellbeing and/or sour their overall sport experience, putting them at risk of dropping out from sport altogether. Fortunately, self-compassion is steadily gaining traction as a personal resource that athletes can use to help navigate setbacks experienced in sport in a healthy and positive way (e.g., Mosewich et al., 2011; Reis et al., 2015; Wilson et al., 2019).

What is self-compassion?

Self-compassion requires an awareness of personal suffering and a desire to help oneself through an emotionally difficult time. Dr. Kristin Neff (2003) describes self-compassion as having three components:

Self-kindness – treating oneself with warmth and understanding in the face of failure or difficult experiences;
Common humanity – understanding that we are all part of the greater human condition and that everyone goes through difficult times; and
Mindfulness – includes moment-to-moment awareness, and taking a more objective, rational approach to negative situations rather than overidentifying with them too strongly or ignoring them.

Unlike self-esteem, which requires positive self-evaluation in reference to others in order to feel good about oneself, self-compassion features an acceptance of one’s own flaws and shortcomings, and thereby, as Neff proposed, emphasizes a positive, supportive self-attitude and approach to life. Notably, self-compassion is related to overall wellbeing and decreased negative emotions, such as shame, in a variety of populations (e.g., university students, older adults; Allen, Goldwasser, & Leary, 2012; Johnson & O’Brien, 2013; Leary et al., 2007), and there is growing evidence of its benefits for athletes.

The role of self-compassion in sport

Within the past decade, self-compassion has been studied in the context of sport largely as a tool to help athletes cope or deal with the emotionally challenging setbacks or obstacles they encounter. Especially when outside support networks are limited or unavailable to athletes, self-compassion might be particularly useful to help athletes overcome a variety of setbacks in adaptive, healthy ways. For this article, we focus on links between self-compassion and two types of setbacks because of their relevance to practitioners who work with athletes: (a) injury and (b) negative evaluations and sport-based performance failures.

Injury

Experiencing injury is a significant setback faced by almost all athletes at some point in their careers. Sometimes sport injuries are minor, and athletes miss little to no time from training, practice, and competition. Other times, sport injuries are more severe, causing athletes to miss significant time in sport. In these cases, even when athletes do return to sport following injury, they may never (or significantly struggle to) return to the same level of performance. Still other times, sport injuries effectively end the sporting careers of athletes, which can be absolutely devastating and extremely difficult to experience. The key point is that injury can be an emotionally difficult setback for athletes.

The good news is that there is growing evidence that self-compassion can help athletes better manage the negative emotions they experience due to injury. By reducing athletes’ anxiety, worry, and avoidance coping strategies in response to injury, self-compassion can enable athletes to focus on healthier, more proactive ways of moving forward with recovery (e.g., adaptive coping, acceptance), particularly as an alternative to ruminating or dwelling on the injury (Huysmans & Clement, 2017). Self-compassion may even reduce injury occurrence by decreasing athletes’ physiological activation to stress and facilitating their ability to focus on relevant cues when on the field, court, or ice (Huysmans & Clement, 2017).

Although the benefits of self-compassion in the context of injury are not fully known, it seems to offer a way for athletes to reduce some of the negative emotions experienced due to sport injury (e.g., shame, humiliation), which might make them more driven to overcome and persevere through injury-based adversity (Wilson et al., 2019). To highlight this point, research coming out of our lab at the University of Saskatchewan, led by Karissa Johnson as part of her graduate thesis, has recently shown that self-compassionate athletes rehabilitating from injury tend to be more mentally tough, perceive having more coping resources, and experience less self-criticism. Importantly, Karissa’s research also shows that self-compassion might allow injured athletes access to a healthier version of mental toughness, characterized by acceptance and wise actions, as opposed to a mental toughness characterized by making poor decisions to push through injury in unhealthy ways.

Negative evaluations and performance failures

It would be rare to work with an athlete who hasn’t felt they made a mistake or failed in sport at some point, and often in critical moments. Similar to injury, mistakes and failures are part of sport, and like injury, they can be an emotionally difficult setback for athletes. Whether it be feeling responsible for a loss due to a missed free throw in a high school basketball game or missing a soccer penalty kick at the World Cup, athletes are oftentimes harshly evaluated or judged by others and themselves. Sometimes it is teammates, competitors, coaches, and parents who are responsible for providing negative, sometimes debilitating feedback, to athletes. Other times, athletes are their own biggest critics, pointing the finger solely at themselves when things go wrong. In many cases, the negative evaluations come from multiple sources.

Regardless of the source(s) of negative evaluation, the level of competition, and magnitude of the mistake or failure, athletes are highly susceptible to emotional suffering that stems from harsh evaluations of their sport performance (Mosewich et al., 2011). Research has shown that athletes experience a variety of maladaptive emotions (e.g., shame, embarrassment, humiliation) and thoughts (e.g., “I am worthless”) when they make mistakes or fail (Reis et al., 2015), while also engaging in self-criticism and self-punishment (Ceccarelli et al., 2019). More generally, performance failures in sport can lead to decreased mental health, a diminished sense of self, and emotional distress (Ceccarelli et al., 2019; Mosewich, Crocker, & Kowalski, 2014).

Similar to its positive impact in helping athletes deal with injury, self-compassion seems to be an effective resource for athletes experiencing difficult emotions resulting from failure and evaluation. By enabling athletes to treat themselves less harshly and put sport failures or mistakes in perspective, self-compassion promotes adaptive coping and a healthier stress response, both psychologically (e.g., viewing current shortcomings as changeable and addressable) and physiologically (e.g., appropriate heart rate response to stress) (Ceccarelli et al., 2019). Put another way, self-compassion helps athletes get through difficult experiences in sport, such as injury and performance failures (and corresponding negative evaluations), in a way that doesn’t require dwelling on them or overidentifying with the setback, leading to a quicker recovery and a more positive overall sport experience.

Strategies to enhance self-compassion

One approach to increase self-compassion amongst athletes is through intervention. For example, Dr. Amber Mosewich and her colleagues developed a one-week sport self-compassion intervention, which effectively enhanced self-compassion levels in highly self-critical women athletes while also decreasing rumination and self-criticism (Mosewich et al., 2013). The intervention was comprised of an initial in-person educational component and a self-compassionate writing exercise, followed by a series of self-compassion writing modules that athletes completed online over the course of seven days. The in-person component of the intervention provided a brief explanation of self-compassion and discussion of relevant findings from self-compassion research (e.g., self-compassion does not promote complacency or passivity; rather, practicing self-compassion is an adaptive, healthy way to navigate challenges). After the 10-minute educational session, the athletes were asked to think about and write a description of a recalled negative event in sport that had happened to them within the past 10 days. They were then given prompts to write about how they could respond to that scenario, centered on the three core elements of self-compassion (i.e., self-kindness, common humanity, mindfulness). This writing exercise provided the athletes with an opportunity to practice self-compassionate writing in advance of the take-home component of the intervention, which featured five writing tasks/modules. As two examples of the writing exercises, they were asked to respond to their negative event in sport by (a) writing a paragraph “expressing understanding, kindness, and concern to yourself…as if you are communicating to a close friend in the same situation” (i.e., self-kindness) and (b) listing “ways in which other people experience similar events” (i.e., common humanity).

In an applied study, Rodriguez and Ebbeck (2015) implemented self-compassion strategies with women gymnasts and their coaches. Through weekly or bi-weekly meetings amongst the gymnasts, coaches, and an external sport psychology consultant, gymnasts engaged in activities that were designed to enhance self-compassion. For example, the gymnasts were asked to write about how they would treat a teammate when the teammate felt really bad about herself and struggled during practice or competition. They also integrated self-compassion breaks into their training routines, which involved visualizing a stressful scenario in gymnastics before developing their own self-compassionate response cues rooted in self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. This was designed to help them develop their skills to manage future situations in healthier ways. A particularly unique component of the study involved the gymnasts selecting different coloured beads to indicate when they had demonstrated positive self-talk and affirmation compared to when they had demonstrated negative self-talk or self-criticism. The gymnasts were also encouraged to think of self-compassion as an approach to prevent “suffering,” which was likened to other unfavourable or adverse outcomes (e.g., becoming out of shape during the off-season could be prevented by “keeping up with off-season conditioning and maintaining healthy eating”). To counter the notion that self-compassion is “self-coddling,” a concern we discuss in more detail in the next section, the gymnasts were asked questions that helped put the use of self-compassion in a balanced perspective (e.g., “Would you withhold water from yourself during your 4-hour practice to be tough on yourself?”).

Barriers to self-compassion and potential solutions

Despite the potential of self-compassion as a resource to help athletes navigate setbacks and emotionally difficult experiences in sport, there are challenges to its widespread application. One barrier is a belief amongst some athletes that self-compassion might present a roadblock to achieving elite status (Sutherland et al., 2014). Specifically, some women athletes have explained that they felt it was necessary to be self-critical of their own poor performances in sport and their sport-based failures to learn from them and get better as athletes, and that self-compassion represented a mindset that encouraged them to let themselves off the hook too easily. Similarly, in a recent study with men athletes conducted by our research team, some of the men explained that when they heard the term “self-compassion” they immediately thought it was “soft” – a barrier to self-compassion in its own right – and that it would encourage them to be “too easy” on themselves. They also noted that viewing their poor performances and sport failures with a harsh, self-critical lens was an essential part of the process that would lead them to improved performances in the future. While such claims are largely unfounded – self-compassion has in fact been shown to be positively related to thriving in sport (Ferguson et al., 2014) and is counter to self-indulgence and deterred motivation (Gilbert et al., 2011) – they represent a challenge to the promotion and practice of self-compassion amongst athletes. Researchers are currently exploring alternative language surrounding “self-compassion” as a way to help remove the “soft” connotation that some people connect with the term. For example, Neff and Germer (2018) introduced the “yin” and “yang” of self-compassion, acknowledging the traditionally feminine “yin” side of self-compassion with the terms “comforting,” “soothing,” and “validating;” and the traditionally masculine “yang” side of self-compassion with the terms “protecting,” “providing,” and “motivating.”

Some athletes’ beliefs that self-compassion might lead to diminished performance expectations and results also sheds light on another potential barrier to the widespread impact of self-compassion in the sporting world – inadequate understanding of the construct. In our research with men athletes, despite them initially suggesting that self-compassion might lead to complacency, the men went on to explain that an initial lack of education about self-compassion led to their negative views. After learning about self-compassion, the men explained that their initial inclinations to reject self-compassion were rooted in a misconception of what it actually is. They emphasized that education and training is an essential component when promoting self-compassion to other athletes. The men elaborated that athletes need to not only become aware of self-compassion, they need to know that self-compassion can help them overcome adversity in sport, leading to improved performance by learning from mistakes and failures, rather than dwelling on them.

In addition to some athletes’ negative or tepid views towards self-compassion, potentially stemming from inadequate understanding, another current barrier to its widespread practice in the sporting world is likely COVID-19. Specifically, some in-person strategies previously used to increase self-compassion awareness and knowledge, and overall self-compassion levels amongst athletes, like introductory educational components (e.g., Mosewich et al., 2013) and group activities (e.g., Rodriguez & Ebbeck, 2015), are more challenging with COVID-19 restrictions. Accordingly, in the current sport landscape, online self-compassion tools, workshops, tutorials, and interventions are likely the only options available. Fortunately, the vast improvement of technology in recent years has made the online design and delivery of approaches to enhance self-compassion feasible and potentially as effective as in-person approaches. For instance, the education component of Mosewich et al.’s (2013) intervention could probably be delivered online fairly seamlessly, integrating with the main writing interventions that were already online. As well, group activities, including meetings between coaches, athletes, mental performance consultants, and sport psychologists, could occur through online video calls. Neff’s online self-compassion meditations and exercises (www.self-compassion.org) are readily available to anyone who visits her website, making it easy for coaches and sport administrators to point athletes in the right direction.

Gender and self-compassion in sport

The vast majority of self-compassion research with athletes to date has been with women athletes. However, our recent research has a growing focus on men athletes and suggests that self-compassion levels depend on athletes’ individual representation of masculinity (Reis et al., 2019). Specifically, men athletes who aligned with a more traditional version of masculinity (i.e., emphasis on traditional masculine norms like aggression, violence, and self-reliance; Parent & Moradi, 2009) had lower levels of self-compassion than men athletes who aligned with a more contemporary, accepting version of masculinity (i.e., inclusive masculinity, where men see all representations of masculinity on an equal plane; Anderson, 2005).

While women athletes face their own set of unique challenges in sport (e.g., a paradox between fulfilling societal expectations of appearance and expectations of performance), so too do men athletes (e.g., emasculation in the form of subordination and/or marginalization stemming from failure to meet performance-based expectations of men in sport, like [failure to] possess speed and strength; Anderson & McGuire, 2010). This matters in the context of self-compassion in sport for the following reasons: (a) it is difficult to know whether self-compassion can help men athletes manage and cope with their unique difficult experiences in sport, and (b) some men athletes might be particularly hesitant to accept/embrace/practice self-compassion, because of potential threats to their masculinity.

In our research with men athletes, they discussed how masculinity was the root cause of many of their recalled emotionally difficult experiences in sport. For example, they described societal pressures and expectations to always perform at high levels and to play through injury, with coaches yelling “man up” from the sidelines. Interestingly, some men explained that refusing to succumb to masculinity-rooted pressures that might cause them harm was itself a masculine quality, and that self-compassion represented masculinity by enabling them to demonstrate mental strength by taking care of themselves. While this line of thinking is encouraging for the implementation and practice of self-compassion amongst men athletes, it would be presumptive to believe that all or even most men athletes feel the same way. However, we are hopeful that the current and future generations of men athletes might gravitate more and more to what seems to be an inclusive representation of masculinity, and one that conceptually aligns with self-compassion.

Take-away message

Self-compassion research in sport has grown significantly over the past decade. More and more athletes are experiencing the benefits of self-compassion, particularly as a way to manage and overcome sport-specific setbacks. Though much of the self-compassion research to date focuses on women athletes or a combination of women athletes and men athletes, self-compassion research with a focus on men athletes is starting to surface in the literature, with encouraging results. The potential of self-compassion is fairly untapped, considering it is relatively new to sport-specific research; but with more education and the possibility of training athletes, coaches, and sport administrators through self-compassion workshops, tutorials, seminars, and interventions, there is much to be gained for athletes and those who support them. Additionally, given the current restrictions resulting from COVID-19 that limit in-person interactions, it might be helpful for self-compassion practitioners to emphasize the development and delivery of online approaches to enhance self-compassion in athletes.

5 strategies to promote self-compassion to athletes

Explain to athletes that self-compassion has been linked to faster recovery from setbacks in sport, which can lead to improved performance.
When you see an athlete facing a setback, encourage them to think about what they would say to a friend experiencing a similar situation.
Have athletes tell you about other athletes who might have experienced similar events.
For a period of 10 days, have your athletes keep track of “beads” electronically. When they engage in positive self-talk or affirmation, they add a green bead. When they engage in negative self-talk or self-criticism, they add a red bead.
Have athletes try a guided self-compassion meditation, such as the Compassionate Body Scan, which is available for free on Kristin Neff’s website (www.self-compassion.org).

Perception of effort – the conscious sensation of how hard, heavy, and strenuous a physical task is – is the ultimate determinant of endurance performance. Goal-setting, motivation, and self-talk are mental skills athletes can use to engage their minds to support performance before and during arduous endurance tasks.

Is focusing on the negatives of the COVID-19 pandemic increasing your stress and decreasing your motivation? Adopting a solution-focused mindset means challenging yourself to find new and better ways to cope with the current realities. Research shows this shift in mindset can increase self-confidence and promote a positive mood.

This blog is the final installment in a series in collaboration with Queen’s University. As an assignment to build knowledge mobilization skills, Dr. Luc Martin, Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, tasked students in his third year team dynamics course to write a SIRC blog. The top five were submitted to and published by SIRC.

It is 7:30am, and I am tired but satisfied with the workout I just completed. As I head to the locker room, I notice a group of players staying behind for some extra work. I am immediately inspired. This group facilitated a positive team experience because young players, like me, looked up to them and were motivated to work as hard as they did, which ultimately contributed to team success. Their influence alone is a reason to believe that subgroups should exist within a team atmosphere, and that trying to dismantle them without cause is unnecessary.

The three certainties of life: Death, taxes, and subgroups

Subgroups are a tight-knit group of individuals with reciprocating relationships that form within a larger group, such as a sport team (Henrich et al., 2000). Within the academic literature, the formation of subgroups in sport was often seen as inherently problematic for team functioning (Martin et al., 2020). However, recent developments reveal that subgroups can provide positive benefits within a team atmosphere, such as improved support, feelings of identity, and norms for productivity (Wagstaff et al., 2017). Further, researchers suggest that their presence is inevitable, which makes interventions to eradicate them a waste of time and resources (Martin et al., 2015). Humans have an innate desire to belong while also experiencing individuality; satisfying both these criteria is difficult in a large group. In that way, subgroups provide us with feelings of acceptance and quality relationships, but in manageably small numbers to enable differentiation and autonomy (Brewer, 2011).

Sowing the seeds of subgroups

Sport researchers have identified three precursors to the development of subgroups (Martin et al., 2015, 2016):

Contextual/Situational Factors: These include the sport type and size of the team. For example, subgroups are more likely to form within football teams (offensive and defensive teams) and athletics teams (track vs. field athletes), compared to a curling team.
Athlete Demographics/Characteristics: Athletes seem to be drawn to others who share similar roles and status on a team. For example, the leadership group is likely to form a subgroup because they share similar responsibilities, or incoming and more veteran members seem to group together because of shared experiences and situations.
General Behaviour Tendencies: Athletes with similar interests (e.g., level of commitment, social behaviours) tend to form subgroups. This is natural as people spend time with likeminded individuals who they enjoy being around.

These precursors influence the grouping behaviours of athletes. As subgroups begin to form, teammates can see the development of hypothetical dividing lines (known as fault lines) that are present in all groups (Lau & Murnighan, 1998).

Coach approaches to managing subgroups

Subgroups emerge throughout team sports and across the age spectrum (Eys et al., 2019). Because of this inevitability, research shows coaches sometimes invest a great deal of time implementing strategies for their management (Martin et al., 2016). However, before intervening, coaches should assess whether the subgroups are helping or hindering the dynamics of the group and can utilize proactive avoidance, subgroup identification, and subgroup management when needed.

Proactive Avoidance:

This involves strategies used during team formation to integrate all members, such as team building activities and intentional membership selection processes. The purpose is to create the least susceptible environment for subgroup issues and to establish a system for players to go through if problems arise.

Identification:

An important process that coaches have discussed is the need to determine if the subgroups within a team are going to be a problem. Different types of groupings have been termed either subgroups or cliques.
- Subgroups represent those “good” groupings that show prosocial behaviours.
- Cliques are more debilitating and represent those that promote antisocial and unethical behaviours, exclude/ostracize teammates, and lower self-esteem.
Coaches should establish clear lines of communication between players and staff to assist in subgroup identification and understanding.

Management:

Once coaches understand the groups present on a team, they can assess them on a continuum to determine if they help, hinder, or are neutral for team functioning.
A subgroup that is facilitative can be used as an example to create positive training habits. Placing incoming athletes in a group that exhibits great work ethic increases the likelihood of the incoming athlete following suit.
In the instance that a subgroup demonstrates debilitative behaviours (i.e., is a clique), coaches should engage in athlete-coach meetings, have purposeful team activities, or remove problematic athletes as a last resort.

What does all this mean for you?

It is important to understand that every team atmosphere is different and there is not a “one way fits all” method for managing subgroups. However, coaches must understand that subgroup formation is inevitable, and that the impact on their team will be less about their presence or absence and more about the behaviours that they exhibit. Understanding how they will influence a team requires clear communication channels and athletes describe wanting to be involved in the process of management, rather than feeling as though they are being controlled (Martin et al., 2016; Wagstaff et al., 2017).

In all facets of life, people will be exposed to and work within groups. Whether it is a sport team, a classroom, or a workplace, there will be people that you identify with and those with whom you do not. Regardless, many of these situations will require you to work across groups to achieve a common goal. For the most part, coaches are advised to focus on task-oriented matters rather than overly concerning themselves with subgroup dynamics. For athletes, after your 7:30am workout, grab a group of likeminded people to get in extra reps and inspire teammates that you do not know are watching. Your team will benefit in the long run.

Being the most skilled athlete or possessing the most experience in a group does not make us good at leadership – we need to learn it. In the latest SIRCuit, Cari Din, leadership learning facilitator and teaching faculty member at the University of Calgary, shares her top four leadership learning strategies.

During epidemics, the number of people whose mental health is affected tends to be greater than the number of people affected by the infection. Past tragedies have shown that the mental health implications can last longer and have greater prevalence than the epidemic itself and that the psychosocial and economic impacts can be incalculable if we consider their resonance in different contexts. (Ornell, Schuch, Sordi, & Kessler, 2020).

Emerging studies are highlighting the very real impact on mental health that prolonged stressors like COVID-19 can have on the general population (e.g., Ornell et al., 2020). With changing levels of public health restrictions in place across the country, many have realized our return to training, coaching, work and school is not a return to normal, but an entirely new social experience. This new reality requires us to navigate new processes across numerous environments, and will often demand that we confront psychological discomforts, worries, and/or fears in places and spaces that once felt like our second homes.

So what can we do proactively to support our mental health and optimal mental performance as we adapt to social life amidst the uncertainties of the pandemic? Below are a few practical tips to consider as we return to work, school, coaching, and training.

Eye contact and positive body language

Physical distancing does not mean emotional distancing. We’ve all gotten better at maximizing our digital tools to connect remotely. As we reintegrate in real life with masks and physical distancing, take extra care in your communication, especially the non-verbal. Eye contact and smiling “with our eyes” makes a world of difference in feeling connected to others and ensuring others feel truly seen. Positive body language supports psychologically safe spaces and positive social interactions even when visible (masks, spaces) and invisible (threat of COVID-19) social barriers exist. Make a point of nurturing interpersonal relationships in your life, at school, work, in your sporting environment, and in your social and home life. Be intentional about growing your connections with others, including your student-athletes or teammates, coaches, and/or colleagues. Communication matters now, perhaps more than ever.

Pre and post daily routines

Just like a high performance athlete learns to develop optimal pre and post competition or game-day routines, consider how to optimize your pre and post daily routines. How can you “book end” your work, school, or training routine to ensure healthy transitions to and from home support your physical and emotional wellbeing? Consider the role and timing of clothing, nutrition, hydration, movement, music, self-talk, goal setting, visualization, and daily gratitude practices. Healthy routines that help you mentally prepare for the day ahead, and/or mentally gear down at the end of the day, can help reduce the impact of pandemic stress on your mental health and allow you to thrive in these times of uncertainty.

Energy management and self-care

While our routines, fitness regimes, and daily habits may have been inconsistent at the start of the stay at home directives, many of us have since created new wellness-related habits. This may include working out at home, more walking and/or moving outdoors, making more meals from scratch, sleeping more, and reconnecting with hobbies and leisure that bring you joy throughout the week. Take the time to appreciate what you learned about supporting your mental health and optimal mental performance at home, and consider how these new practices can be sustained or adapted for continued joy.

Get excited for new solutions

There is no denying that COVID-19 is a real issue for us all to contend with, but focusing on the problem for extended periods of time can be both stressful and discouraging. Instead, adopt a solution-focused mindset. Wehr (2010) found that, compared to a problem-focused intervention, solution-focused interventions increased self-confidence and established a positive mood (as cited in, Grant & Gerrard, 2019). Challenge yourself and those around you to find new and better ways of doing things so our learning, working, and training experiences are improved in the process. By being solution-focused we can meaningfully help each other attain goals, build self-efficacy, and enhance emotional wellbeing in all our pursuits of excellence.

Cognitive fitness

Periods of prolonged psychological stress as a result of grief, trauma or pandemics can impact our mental performance. Consider how you can support your cognitive fitness in fun and creative ways every day! Our brains thrive on variability – studies suggest that proactive mental activity has neuroprotective and neuroplastic benefits throughout aging (Phillips, 2017). Engage your mind in diverse and meaningful ways through continuing education, reading, leisure, arts and crafts, online brain games (e.g. Luminosity and Peak), and off line mental gymnastics such as sudoku, word cross puzzles, puzzles, cards, board games, etc. Give yourself permission to have fun while seriously training your mind and optimizing cognitive fitness.

Emotional intelligence

Last but not least, actively practice emotional intelligence. Tune in daily and ask yourself how you feel, what you need most, and how you can honour your emotional needs. Likewise, support colleagues, fellow coaches, and teammates by checking in, listening and expressing empathy, and validating their feelings. All too often we go through our days reacting rather than responding with great self-awareness. Take the time to enhance your self-awareness and notice how this allows you to self regulate your emotional life, and tune into others more effectively. You could do this through journaling (including gratitude practice), praying and/or engaging in a spiritual practice that sustains you, seeking humour and light on purpose, and by engaging in mindfulness including through meditation. Meditation, for example, has been found to reduce cortisol levels following stress, as well as being associated with changes in the structure, activation, and neural activity of our brain (Phillips, 2017). In other words, emotional and spiritual health matters to brain health.

Final thoughts

In closing, I invite you to get to know yourself better throughout this unusual experience that is COVID-19, and use it to also grow and deepen your social connections. Your mental health and optimal mental performance is well worth your caring attention.

In times of fear and uncertainty, when threats to one’s own survival and that of others become one of the main issues of daily life, many believe that mental health care can wait and that efforts should focus on preserving life. However, mental health is precisely one of the keys to surviving this latest pandemic and all that it entails in the short, medium, and long term. (Da Silva, Miranda, Diaz, Teles, Malloy-Diniz, & Palha, 2020).

This blog is the third installment in a series in collaboration with Queen’s University. As an assignment to build knowledge mobilization skills, Dr. Luc Martin, Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, tasked students in his third year team dynamics course to write a SIRC blog. The top five were submitted to SIRC, and will be published over the next few months.

It is May 31, 2018: the final seconds of game one of the NBA finals between the Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers are slipping away and JR Smith is unaware of the time. He dribbles the ball out of the key rather than attempting a shot to win the game. The lack of communication amongst teammates cost the Cavaliers the game and resulted in conflict within the team. The questions remains: why was no one communicating at the most critical point in the game? This blog explores important concepts relevant to team communication and provides practical strategies for coaches and athletes interested in improving the way their team communicates.

The benefits of communication

Communication is an essential process for any group—without it, there is no sense of collaboration or understanding among members. Communication is key for identifying and agreeing on objectives, evaluating and adjusting performance, and for enabling effective team functioning. Indeed, communication can often be the difference between winning and losing. For example, in NCAA Division 1 women’s doubles tennis, winning teams exhibited two-times more communication than losing teams (Lausic et al., 2009). Interestingly, despite the countless studies that emphasize the importance of communication, limited resources exist that are devoted to helping coaches and athletes become better communicators (Hanson, 2019).

Developing team communication

Effective teams can share information in a range of different ways, but the eventual goal should be to create “shared knowledge.” This can be achieved through two methods—creating transactive memory systems or strengthening shared mental models.

Transactive memory is a knowledge sharing system that often develops in relationships or groups where people assume responsibility for different knowledge areas and rely on each other for information (Ren & Argote, 2011). A set of experiments showed team performance to improve when members divided their cognitive tasks more effectively (Kameda et al., 2015). A great example of this is the relationship between Michael Jordan and his teammates from the Chicago Bulls in 1995-1998. The division of tasks and clear understanding of roles amongst Jordan, Dennis Rodman, Scottie Pippen, and Steve Kerr resulted in the most powerful Bulls team yet—as transactive memory improved, so did the team’s overall performance. Generally, changes in team membership may make it difficult to maintain a high level of transactive memory, so it is important to remain as consistent as possible to grow as a team, or to make sure that incoming members are brought up to speed as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Shared mental models represent common beliefs about group objectives, how to best achieve those objectives, and what it means to be a member of a team (Mathieu et al., 2000). Teammates who share mental models can be described as being “on the same page.” For example, Lebron James and Dwayne Wade were described as demonstrating strong shared mental models during their time playing together on the Miami Heat from 2010-2014 (Friel, 2017). Their striking chemistry stemmed from their ability to anticipate one another’s actions. Shared mental models are important to build in a team to communicate efficiently and anticipate behaviours amongst teammates.

Strategies to improve team communication

There are several ways to establish transactive memory and shared mental models:

Performance reviews – Reviews of individual and team performance with athletes and coaching staff can build a common understanding of what works and what does not, and establish priorities for further development. These can also be an opportunity to allow athletes to take a leadership role and demonstrate communication-based expectations within a team.
Team training – Employing simulations where the team works through problems and increases their shared understanding of preferred systems/playing style and overarching team objectives is a way to build communication skills. These opportunities enable athletes to reflect on the impact of their in-game decisions, push through problems as a team, and understand the expertise and tendencies of teammates.
Planning – Reviewing team objectives and having brainstorming sessions to discuss collective actions can be valuable in helping members understand other perspectives. These sessions will also help a group understand different formal and informal roles and ensure everyone is on the same page moving forward.

Looking back to 2018

If the Cavaliers had better communication practices through transactive memory or shared mental models, would JR Smith have made the mistake seen around the world? With these assets, his teammates might have spoken to each other on the floor before the whistle blew, ensuring everyone was on the same page about the score and the objectives for the next possession; or Smith may have been able to better anticipate his teammates actions having learned from his teammates’ tendencies and expertise. It is clear that many teams do not have it all figured out when it comes to optimizing performance, which is what in part, makes watching sports exciting. All you can do as a coach or an athlete is put your team in the best possible position to succeed given the opportunity. One way to do that is to emphasize communication.

New research is examining how creativity can influence decision-making in sport. Analysis of professional and semi-professional soccer players revealed higher-creative players made quicker tactical decisions on the field, and displayed an enhanced focus that prevented them from missing key information during the game.

New research led by David Hardisty, professor at the UBC Sauder School of Business, investigates the science behind why we procrastinate and how excitement, anticipation, and dread factor into decision-making. To break the cycle of procrastination, Hardisty recommends changing the language of how you think about negative tasks. Instead of “having to” go for a run, for example, remind yourself that you “get to” do it.