The Performance Coach Newsletter

The Performance Coach Newsletter

Welcome to the first edition of The Performance Coach newsletter.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to share with you some of my learnings and experiences and what I believe makes successful people and successful teams. These are based on my involvement with teams in both business and sport at the very highest levels for the past thirty years.

My newsletter will issue regularly. If you enjoy it please pass it on to your friends and invite them to join my mailing list.

In This Issue

• Basics of Sports Psychology
• Great Quotes
• Getting in touch

Champions are ordinary people who make the extraordinary effort!

_________________________________________________________________________

Basics of Sports Psychology

Getting Started …..

The area of sports has become so competitive that the difference between winning and losing is only ‘a matter of inches’. Those inches are all around us and the ability to capture them will be the difference in making you and your team champions.

Sports psychology gives you many ways to achieve those inches. The following is the structure I build my programme around. It involves three key principles.

Desire …. Committment ….Self Belief……

Find any Champion and test to see if they have these qualiites. You will find they are always there!!!!!

What do they mean?

1. Desire

This is the reason why you want to achieve your goal. It is the motive that keeps you going. My biggest challenge is to get people to set really big goals. Most people are held back because they have self limiting beliefs. To overcome this I ask them this question.

‘What would you like to achieve if you knew you could not fail?’

The answer is usually something they have dreamed of achieving. You see dreams precede reality and they nourish it. So once we have ‘the dream’, we note it and we get action orientated.

This is where we move to step number two – commitment.

2. Commitment

Once we have the goal we have to start working on how to achieve it. This is about setting actions and getting working on them. It is all about commitment.

And for the really big goals this is about big commitment.

It becomes a journey which will encompass everything in your life. Not alone is it about phsical training, but it’s also about your diet, your social life, watching what you drink and getting the right amount of sleep.

It will impact on family and friends and you will have to make tough choices and sacrifices along the way.

“There is no short cut to anywhere worth going”

3. Self Belief

People who struggle to be Champions go to games ‘hoping to win’. Champions travel ‘knowing they will win’.

There are four key aspects to this. Champions are always

Confident – Positive – Strong and Fit.

Confident: This is simple … if you know what you have to do and you know how to do it you are confident.

Positive: Champions feel good about themselves, about the sport they play and about the people they play with. They are proud of the jersey they wear and the the people they represent.

Strong: What happens to you / your team when something goes wrong? When you concede an early goal or when you get a player sent off do you go on the green or the red platform?

On the Green platform everyone lifts their game 10% and the objective is to fight back.

On the Red platform people just drop the head and it’s a matter of, “why does it always go wrong for us”?

Likewise when the Champions get on top they immediately build on it. They follow a goal with another score. When a player wins the first tackle they win the second and the third …..

Fit: Fit is about being physically and mentally fit.

Most teams have good physical trainers, but how many do ‘the mental push ups’. Do you know how to prepare your mind for the big game? Do you know how to deal with mistakes? Have you triggers to deal with any weaknesses you have?

Mental fitness is the difference between winning and losing and one can be sure that champions are doing their mental push ups.

_________________________________________________________________________

Great Quotes

‘Things turn our best for those who make the best of how things turn out’
John Wooden

‘If you believe you can or believe you cannot you will prove yourself right’
Henry Ford

‘You become what you think about most of the time’
Norman Vincent Peale

_________________________________________________________________________

Getting in touch……

If you are looking to get that ‘extra inch’ in your game or for your team please call me to see how we can work together. Learn how I have worked with All Ireland winning teams (Loreto Hockey Club, AIL champions 2009, pictured) and top international sports people. Sessions can be arranged either on a one to one or group basis.

Also, if you wish to share some of your experiences please email me theperformancecoach@gmail.com

Thank you for taking time to read this first edition of my newsletter.

Sincerely,
Gerry Grehan
The Performance Coach