Tiger Woods II: Hard Work

Ben Hogan was known to say, “I’ve noticed that the harder I work, the luckier I get.”  The essence of Hogan’s communication is that good things happen when the sweat equity has been put in.  Tiger Woods brought a new level to hard work in golf, not just putting in the requisite hours on the range, but transforming the golfer into all-around athlete, adding strength conditioning, ab-work, leg strength and even speed work, thus making golf not just a sport for swing wonky nerd, but for the big-boy looking to hit the long ball, and appealing to the football, basketball and baseball fan.  It is also clear that many of the incredible shots Tiger pulled off to win golf tournaments were the direct result of the hard work, both on the range and in the gym, that he had put into his game.  Here are some of the benefits of hard work I encourage you to consider:

Confidence:  Any athlete will tell you that their regimen of hard work produced in them an invaluable sense of confidence.  Confidence is such an obviously vital state of mind that it almost doesn’t bear mentioning.  However, many people feel as though confidence is a character trait rather than something that can be honed.  But, again, think about Tiger Woods: he may be confident by temperament, but his hard work undergirds every shot he takes, every stride he walks.

Motivation: All teachers, therapists, bosses and coaches want to unlock the mystery of motivation, and solve the question of what makes people want to change, improve, and excel.  Often, though, it’s almost impossible even for people themselves to say why they do what they do.  So, maybe we can say that hard work itself breeds hard work.  Hard work, and the dividends it pays off, flicks a switch in an athlete to hunger for even more hard work.  Think again of Tiger Woods: he may be the only golfer you can name who, at the peak his abilities, refashioned his swing no less than three times.  Only someone who loves hard work would subject himself to something like that in search of better results.

Audacity: Readers might reasonably argue with me that audacity and confidence are versions of the same thing.  I am going to claim that from a performance standpoint, they are quite different skills.  Confidence provides the belief that you belong out there and can win, whereas audacity gives you the belief that you can pull off the stunning athletic moment that steals the show and knocks the wind out of your opponent’s sails.  Consider just two of the following examples from his amazing repertoire of audacious shots:

http://youtu.be/vRCjJi_uDp8

http://youtu.be/bHZ3x-A_-AM

Remember: there is a difference between audacity and vainglory.  That difference is hard work.

Work hard.  Be confident.  Be audacious!

Assessment*

 Recently, I was talking with a friend about a problem he was having with his tennis game.  He had come back to competitive play after a brief hiatus.  In the conversation, he identified the problem of his wandering concentration, of large, multi-game gaps where he went somewhere else, much to the detriment of his play.  So, we talked about drills he could use to stay focused, to sit the straying puppy mind.  Then, he wrote me an email saying that he thought the problem was connected to his fitness level, and I wrote back agreeing that as fitness wanes, so too concentration.  Then he wrote again saying that he thought that what the problem really needed was a thorough assessment.  Again, I had to agree.  So, since that conversation, the issue of assessment has been on my mind.

         Most club-level, or even league-level players tend to solve problems in their games with an equipment change. It's the easiest, least invasive procedure, promising the latest “game-improving” technology.  But a quick peek into any golfer's closet will reveal many such quick fixes: discarded putters and drivers by the dozen that were going to be The Answer.  These rejected solutions hint at a truth we all know too well: retail therapy feels good in the moment, but doesn’t go very far in solving more pervasive, underlying issues.  So, I have had the following thoughts for any athlete looking to improve, beat their nemesis, and achieve new personal bests:

         Fitness.  At any and every skill level, fitness will be a major factor in winning or losing, even in sports that don’t look all that physically demanding.  Just look at what Tiger Woods has shown the world about fitness in the golf game.  Most players use their regular play to get fit for their sport.  But, if they were to dedicate even one workout slot per week to improving their anaerobic capacity, they would be amazed at the result.  It's not just concentration that frays with fatigue, but everything does.  Everything.  Another way of saying this is that without a good fitness base, every problem in a close contest will be one of fitness.  So, get that problem out of the way.

         Willingness.  The next most important skill in assessing problems is really a frame of mind rather than one of technique: a willing attitude toward hearing or seeing the problem as it is.  I recently read an article that reviewed findings from a study on self-assessment.** The bad news was that it turns out we are pretty bad self-assessors, and further, we tend to inflate our abilities in just those areas in which we have a weakness.  Experts call this problem a problem of metacognition, which is, in essence, the ability to get some distance from our own thoughts.  An additional dimension to this syndrome is how entrenched it is.  We don’t give up our incorrect assessments easily.  We tend to believe what we believe.  So, in order to assess problems in our games we have to be both willing to be wrong about our own thoughts about our game, and willing to hear what the real problem might be.

         Data.  If the article I referenced above is correct, we do need outside eyes and some quantitative data to see the problem in a new light.  We don’t need to get all Moneyball on the problem, but take a lesson from your pro, videotape yourself, or track yourself on a number of relevant data points.  The data will help as long as it contributes to seeing the problem for what it is, not for how you think it.  You may notice that some problems are brand new to you, while others are ones you actually knew about but were somehow avoiding bringing to your fully conscious mind.  The more interested you can be in discovering problems, the more open you will be to their remediation.

         One unifying feature of successful assessment is the absence of ego.  Generally, you will find that greater ego investments yield fewer dividends in truth.  And every skill I’ve discussed above requires a diminishing of ego investment.  Often, the breakdown of ego comes when we are at our wits’ end for making the same mistake for the umpteenth time, or have lost to our rival yet again.  But it needn’t come to that.  Rather than buying the next shiny new thing, invest in some good assessment.

*A slightly different version of this article was previously published on the website The Daily Squash Report (http://www.dailysquashreport.com/), in the column “What’s On My Mind,” March 18, 2014.

**Kruger, J. & Dunning, D.  1999.  Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments.  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  1121-1134.

 

Focus: The Eye of the Tiger

 Before his unfortunate sex scandal made him a polarizing figure in sport, Tiger Woods was seen as a model of competitive fire.  And while many aspects of his dominance merit comment, the one I am going to call your attention to in this piece is the issue of his focus.  In his heyday, he was known for his clutch play down the stretch, the absence of errors, and a trait his father honed in him and predicted would undo his opponents: his killer instinct.  If we could trace the source of his successful ability to bear down during important moments, the thing we would want athletes to emulate would be the look in his eye, the eye of the tiger, if you will.  Of course, he has this focus on every shot, but you will notice it particularly on his short game shots, and most supremely on his putts.  Watch him stalk a putt and you will see the picture of competitive focus.  My recommendation to you is that you try to add this skill to your repertoire.  To find the eye of your inner tiger, try the following set of skills.

            Directing: Yoga gurus for millennia have commented that a critical aspect of attention is our ability to direct it.  Without some concerted effort, attention wanders, and with it our cognitive, and indeed, physical energy.  Yoga connects sharpening the mind’s eye to our ability to control where we focus the vision of our actual eyes, and calls this skill 'the drishti’, a Sanskrit word which means, "the gaze."  It has the quality of being intense and soft at one and the same time.  It burns deeply, yet feels cool.  It is equally quite engaged and yet detached.  If it burns too hot, we will become overly activated, and yet if it becomes too cool, the very focus we are looking for will slip away.

            Filtering: I have mentioned this skill in a prior post ("Focus?"), but I will reiterate it here. We correctly think of focus as an act of directing our attention, but it is important to say that it is also an act of filtering out distracting inputs.  Many have said that expertise involves increasingly being able to distinguish salient versus irrelevant factors.  The filtering skill is a version of this, but doesn't require you to be a black belt in martial arts or a Jedi knight.  It does require that you sift out the noise of your thoughts and emotions and be present to the relevant factors of the task at hand.  Strong emotions, perceived slights, and dwelling on past or future moments are all things that should get filtered out if we want to get the eye of the Tiger.  In fact, Tiger's father bragged about coaching this skill in Tiger by intentionally trying to distract him during his putting routine as a child: jangling keys, coughing, whistling, and stomping his feet.  He was goading Tiger to work on the skill of filtering.

            Practicing: As can be seen from the example of the Woods family, the filtering skill can be practiced.  Nor does it need to be done in a cruel, Earl Woods kind of way.  Try this drill: Sit or stand about four or five feet from a picture on a wall, preferably one without text.  While maintaining a good posture, find a spot about the size of a quarter on the picture to focus on, and try to keep both your visual and attentional focus on the spot.  Can you achieve 'one-mindedness', that unbroken concentration that does not waver, and stays a medium-grade temperature?  You may notice that your eyes wander.  You may notice that your attention rushes to many things other than the task of just looking.  You may notice that you slouch, or get hot or cold: all inputs to notice, dismiss, and gently return your attention and your focus to your spot.  Remember: the goal is not to become so united with your spot that you feel as though you have left your body or the present moment and have melded with the picture.  The goal is to remain focused on the spot and be able to notice, but filter out, distractions by bringing your attention back to the task of focusing on the spot.  Try it for three minutes three times a week, and then increase your time to five minutes per session.  Easy drill, hard practice.

            Whether you are a fan or a detractor of Tiger Woods, you have to admit that the Tiger years were a wonder to behold for the definitiveness of their dominance, their duration, and the sustained clarity of vision that was required for so protracted a period.  You would definitely say that one of the main ways he outplayed his opponents was that he outconcentrated them.  You might also say that what has led to his demise is the fact that he let his all-too famous gaze rove a little too far of field.

Lessons From A Loss

Because I try to practice what I preach, I want to share with you some lessons I learned from a tough loss.  In an earlier post (“On Rivals and Rivalry”), I introduced you to a team I coached that was involved in a very unpleasant rivalry.  Without rehashing the details, I am going to tell you about a moment that I have reflected on a great deal since leaving that team.  We were going to play our rival for the last time in the season at their home courts, and when I pulled the van into the parking spot at our rival’s venue and was going to give some words of encouragement, my captain said that she had a request.  As it was her last match, I acquiesced, not knowing what it was.  Then, she pulled out her smartphone, plugged some portable speakers into it and played for the team Al Pacino’s inspirational speech from “Any Given Sunday.”  It was a difficult moment for me, because, having agreed, I didn’t feel as though I should turn it off, and yet it felt strange to me that we were listening to a fictional coach give a fictional speech to a fictional team.  Wasn’t I supposed to be giving a speech?  Wasn’t the captain?  Was this a referendum on my motivational speaking abilities?  Either way, I had a bad feeling in my stomach, and was not surprised to come out, yet again, on the losing end of an encounter with our rivals, finding that Al Pacino hadn’t worked his magic on our squad.

        But, it is not their fault.  In all arenas, but perhaps the athletic more than any other, we have become entranced by the power of the pre-game speech to inspire bold performance in players.  And although I am a big fan of listening to and delivering a good speech, I would like to dispel the notion that a good pre-game speech makes much of a difference in performance during the game.  In particular, I do not think speeches are a good way to overcome performance anxiety, and I would urge athletes and coaches alike to adopt a different approach to peak performance on any given Sunday other than relying on speeches.  And so, my advice to coaches when seeking peak performance from their players is to keep the pre-game words to a minimum and follow some simple steps:

Clarity of plan: Most coaches have devised fantastic practice plans throughout the season.  Game day is no different.  And big game days even more so.  That pre-game plan should be extremely detailed, including when people should arrive at the venue (or departure) site, what they should have eaten, what and who should speak before the event, how the warm up should proceed, and, who should watch and coach which players.  Finally, this plan should consider all contingencies as the match gets toward its decisive points.  As you can see from the vignette above, one problem was that I had not communicated with the captain as to who was going to speak when.  Thus, the plan, just like any other kind of training, is seeking to control as much as possible before and during the event and avoid all surprises.

Clarity of Communication: Pre-game speeches are nice, but the most important form of communication--other than discipline in practice--is the kind that happens during the game.  If a coach says something to his/her players, it should be brief (“hit to her backhand,” “volley more”) and digestible.  A good technique is to ask players to repeat what they heard before they go back into the melee.  There is nothing worse that adding to a player’s muddle with muddling words.  And remember: raising your voice, or even worse, yelling, is not a way of being more clear.  It is likely to contribute to rather than reduce performance anxiety.

Clarity of Role: One of the problems from the example above is that there was a lack of role clarification.  The captain was doing something I thought I was going to do, and, perhaps the players thought I was going to do something I didn’t do.  In any case, being very clear with a team about who does what and when is a key aspect of any successful team endeavor.  Its opposite, role diffusion, leads to confusion, poor performance, and potentially deep rifts among team members, as people are not giving and getting what they need from each other.

        Perhaps this is a problem of Hollywood’s making: when we think of good coaches, we think of them delivering rousing speeches.  But, really, the main job of a coach is the quite difficult task of fostering group cohesion in order to create the conditions under which each player can grow as a player and person and give her best up for the common good.  The three steps I’ve offered here will help.  And maybe you don’t want to take my word for it, but just please don’t take Al’s.

Learning from Loss

In our ruthlessly competitive culture, there is a huge premium on winning. Unfortunately, there are some pretty obvious negative consequences to this emphasis. First and foremost among these consequences: 'always be a winner' turns quickly into 'winner takes all' and then into 'win at all costs'.  But another insidious cost of this attitude is that losing becomes unacceptable.  In the arena of youth sport, we have managed this shame often by veering toward the equally unrealistic position of 'everybody's a winner', with score-less games, equal playing time for everyone, and trophies for all.  So, how is a young athlete to sort out this contradiction?  My answer: preach a gospel of losing.  We shouldn't preach this gospel for its own sake, but given that losing is more common than its opposite, we should remove the shame from it and celebrate it for all the things it can teach us not only about life but, well, winning.  By being better losers, we can in fact become better winners.

           In the very first post of this blog (“Scott’s Lytham Opportunity”), I wrote about Adam Scott's collapse in the last four holes at the British Open in 2012.  In that post, I suggested that if he really wanted to contend again in a major championship, he would do well not to shy away from the bitter sting of that defeat, but to really approach it, expand it and investigate it closely in order to mine it for all that it could teach him about how he handled himself in that situation so that he could master it the next time.  We'll, if his 2013 year is any indication, he did just that: winning the year's first major in a nail-biting and gutsy playoff, contending again at the British, finishing very high in the season's standings, and just completing a torrid stretch of three major victories in his native Australia.  In short, rather than shriveling up in defeat, he gained strength from it.  Indeed, he even stated at the time, as reporters were asking him if his terrible loss meant that he wasn't destined to win a major, "No, in fact, it has shown me just the opposite: that I can win a major, that I belong to be there down the stretch, that my hard work is paying off."  Now, unfortunately for me, I'm not Adam Scott's sport performance guy, but if I were, here is what I would have preached to him in 2012 that I think every athlete needs to know about the value of losing.

                       Learning from loss: Every loss has a crucial juncture, a crisis point that we would like to go back to and re-do if we could.  Those moments are the ones to investigate. Did they come from a technical weakness or from a psychological one, or, from a combination of the two?  Or, did it stem from improper preparation?  Put the loss on an x-Ray machine and go through it, detail by painful detail.  Doing so will both teach you to avoid those mistakes in the future, and will inure you to the shame of losing.  Because one thing I can guarantee you of for certain: if your performance is only motivated by the fear of losing, you will lose often, gain little satisfaction from your victories, and not grow as an athlete or person.  You cannot go for broke when you are clenching the till so fearfully.

                       Practice to lose.  In our winner culture, we have become so loss-averse that we think that in order to have winners, we must train winners.  But, often a top athlete is only tested in defeat.  And so, the top athletes often train under conditions where winning is almost impossible, so that flaws and mental weaknesses can be exposed rather than hidden.  Such practices include playing against stronger players, devising pressure situations in practice, and most of all, analyzing what broke down in those situations.  In order for such an analysis to be truly effective, it should be conducted with a ruthless honesty and relentless compassion at one and the same time.  Shame breeds fear which increases the odds that we are going to play from a protective rather than an appetitive position.

                       Losing and dying:  Many athletes equate losing with dying.  They might not be conscious of this association, but it is there.  And how could it not be, if they have  been bred to be winners, if their culture celebrates winners so extravagantly, and if they have lived sheltered from the real consequences of loss?  Perhaps even their parents, in synch with their culture, have adapted an ego orientation with them with regard to their sport participation (“Ego&Mastery”).  Often this athlete reveals himself by the temper tantrums he throws upon losing.  For him, we should burn the ring of falsehood that surrounds him by over-exposing him to loss.  Doing so will test his determination and love for the sport, and will burn away the protective carapace which he has built around himself, sealing him off from learning the lessons of loss. 

        I am not preaching losing for the sake of humiliation.  I do not think humiliation is a good training method.  But, on the same token, there are very serious negative consequences to training our young people with an eye toward winning rather than with an eye toward process.  I will leave you with a quote from one of sport's most loss-averse losers, a character whose downfall is only mirrored in the pages of Greek tragedy, Lance Armstrong, and his attitude toward losing: "I like to win.  But more than anything, I can't stand the idea of losing, because to me, that equals death."  So, let's raise athletes with a stronger sense of themselves than that.  Let's look loss right in the eye, so we are winning with joy rather than relief.  Let's learn from loss.

Selfish v. Self-full

Young athletes are often introduced to the old saw that there is no “I” in team.   On its surface, the message seems obvious: the team only succeeds when the individual puts his or her own needs aside.  Those needs generally mean thinking that we should be playing a certain desired role, get a huge portion of playing time, and receive the lion’s share of the attention.  Instead, this dictum succinctly reminds us to sublimate the self in order for the common good to succeed. Any thought of the self, this statement suggests, is selfish.

The problem is that this statement is often offered to rather young athletes, people for whom the concept of joining a collective is not yet developmentally appropriate.  We may remember that becoming husbands, wives, co-workers and citizens is a pretty advanced developmental step, because doing these tasks successfully involves already having a pretty fully formed sense of self to bring to those relationships.  But, young athletes, from pre-little league to almost the end of college, are caught up in the tasks of defining self-hood.  That is their full time job.  So, telling a latency-aged or adolescent athlete to have no thought of themselves is a developmentally confusing message.  Furthermore, ignoring athletes’ developmental level often leads to behavior that seems downright selfish.  That is, the more we try to tell the athlete to not have a big self, the more we will see that self asserting itself in ever more frantic ways.  

So, what am I saying?  Am I suggesting that young athletes cannot join teams?  Absolutely not!  But, what I am suggesting is that parents and coaches help clarify for young athletes what their role is in any given team situation so that the young athlete can be invested wholeheartedly in mastering that role.  Fulfilling that role to the best of the young person’s ability, then, can be the way they show up in their full selfness for the team or athletic moment.  In essence, I am arguing for a concept of self-fullness over selfishness.             

To make this difference between more clear, let me give a simple chart comparing common forms of selfish behavior in an athlete and how that can be redirected to more a more self-full orientation.

The Selfish Athlete	The Self-Full Athlete
The selfish athlete feels as though s/he needs and deserves to play the starring role (quarterback, pitcher, batting clean-up, short stop), get the lion’s share of playing time, make the winning play.  The selfish athlete does not see the value of practice.	The self-full athlete knows his/her role on the team and delights in learning and excelling at that role.  The self-full athlete enjoys both practice and game time, and sees them as both valuable opportunities to master their role.
The selfish athlete cannot tolerate setbacks, and blames teammates and referees for them.  The selfish athlete throws temper tantrums in the face of these setbacks.	The self-full athlete feels but manages intense disappointment, and has a balanced appraisal of blame and fault.  S/he does not make a spectacle of him/herself in victory or defeat.
Since, for any athlete, a loss represents a threat to the self, the selfish athlete takes losing as an opportunity to quit.  Quitting is never far from the mind of the selfish athlete.	The self –full athlete abides a loss.  And based on that perseverance, s/he can mine the valuable data that a loss presents.  The self-full athlete gains strength from a loss.
The selfish athlete can’t really identify any reason they play the sport.	The self-full athlete can quickly identify several reasons why they love playing their sport, aspects that make them feel more alive.

There are a few important lessons here for coaches, and parents, and athletes.  

• For coaches: make sure to clarify for your athletes what their role is at every moment, and what success looks like in that role.  Role clarification is not just good for the team dynamics, it’s an essential component of good team performance.

• For parents: from a very early age with your athlete, adopt a mastery orientation over an ego orientation (see http://altiusperformanceworks.blogspot.com/2013/03/sport-parents-ii-ego-mastery_6.html), and make sure to model that orientation in your own life.  If you espouse it, but don’t believe it, your young athlete will detect the difference and be more aligned with your intent than with your message.

•  For athletes: if you notice that the comments in the left-hand column of my grid apply to you, maybe it’s time to re-assess your commitments, and either reconnect with your primal joy for your sport, or, in fact, find another endeavor.   In moments of wavering affiliation, always come back to what you love about your sport, how it feels when you do it right, how uncluttered it feels to have intention and action so closely linked.  It feels great.  It feels like flying.  It feels so full of self, that, at its far edges, it feels selfless.  Those are moments when you’re ready to attach yourself to a bigger canvas, a bigger picture, a bigger plan.

Excuses & Radical Responsibility

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the goofy t-shirt that has common excuses tennis players use when they hit a bad shot.  The shirt says things like: “the sun got in my eyes,” and “my strings were too tight.”  You get the point.  While the shirt is intended as a light joke, it speaks to a natural tendency that all of us have when we make a mistake.  We immediately leap to the mitigating factors that led us astray.  Top athletes, in particular, fall prey to this defense mechanism, often called denial, because they have honed their games to such an extent that they feel as though they are no longer prone to simple mistakes.  This is why you so often see a player glance with a disbelieving look at his or her strings, racket, the ground or the air after a bad shot, trying to fathom the reason for their miscue.  But instead of excusing away a bad shot, I encourage you to use a skill I will call ‘radical responsibility’, in which you avoid the easy balm of environmental fluke and instead take full, personal ownership for the mistake.  Owning your errors is the quickest path to shoring them up, whereas excusing them away is the surest way to remain in the fiction-laden universe of denial and sour grapes.  In this post, I will expand on this common pitfall and promote the skill of radical responsibility as a way toward improved performance.

    Often, there are some other cognitive distortions lurking behind a defense mechanism and it’s important to know which one you might be using when you resort to excuses.  I have written about them both previously, but the first is perfectionism.  Many athletes understandably fall prey to perfectionism because they work so hard and are always striving for the perfect result.  This kind of striving is a good thing.  But it derails performance when the athlete thinks he or she has trained away all mistakes.  But even the best players hit the ball into the net or chili-dip an easy chip shot.  An excuse, then, masks the insult that the mistake has caused to the imagined perfection.  But, often a mistake can be a good opportunity to notice a technical flaw or to realize that your attention has strayed from the task at hand.  The second one is grandiosity, the idea that as we train and get better, we get beyond making certain mistakes, that somehow they are beneath us, that One so Great should never make an error so small.  They say that great mathematicians are not good at simple calculations.  But, that doesn’t make them immune to the laws of nature which addition, subtraction and division describe.

    No.  The real opportunities for learning from mistakes comes from taking radical responsibility for them.  Instead of “I had a bad lie,” try, “I didn’t account for my lie.”  Instead of “the wind really took that,” try, “I didn’t adequately judge the wind.”  That is, radical responsibility demands that you bring your own agency into focus before considering the environmental factors.  Doing so will give you more opportunities to know what you need to work on, and will give you a greater sense of ownership in the outcome.  You take credit for your victories, so you should also put yourself forward as the author of your mistakes.

    I will leave you with two recent examples of how this sense of radical responsibility can play itself out even among the best players.  After missing the cut at this year’s U.S. Open, 2007 Masters champion Zach Johnson remarked, “I’d describe the whole course as manipulative.  It just enhances my disdain for the USGA and how they manipulate courses.”  Now contrast that remark with one that comes from the 1996 P.G.A. Champion, Mark Brooks.  Many people might not have known that he was actually caddying for another tour player at this year’s Players Championship.  When asked what his years of competitive experience were bringing to his man’s bag, he replied: “One thing I try to get him to do is to take responsibility for his shots, really do it, deep down.  And the second thing is to work on his deficiencies.”  Note that the two are connected: take radical responsibility for your mistakes, see them as windows to deeper technical flaws, and then use that feedback to reduce their frequency.  Radical responsibility: put it in your bag and on your next t-shirt.
(For help with this or any other performance challenge, don't hesitate to contact Altius Performance Works at MattMunichPhD@gmail.com.)