Spiraling Out of Control - What to Do

Spiraling Out of Control - What to Do

Almost daily, whether I’m coaching or not, I notice things about my life that I learned while playing sports in my youth. Most stems from our “mental game” lessons as a player for Ithaca College. On Thursdays, our off day, we would lift weights then go to one of the classrooms in the “Hill,” the athletic facility, and complete a hour-long lesson on how to think about the game.

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How to Prevent the Downward Spiral

How to Prevent the Downward Spiral

I hear it all the time, “Is there some kind of trick that I can use during a game to prevent me from going into a downward spiral?” It’s frustrating (and even more confusing) to start off well and then lose this “groove” later in the game.

While at first it seems sometimes coaches over-analyze what could have happened…”she got tired”, “she lost it mentally”, “she stopped performing her mechanics properly,” and so on, at second thought, I believe this is an under-analysis or a faulty analysis without proper work on the back end to diagnose issues and adjust practice accordingly. In order to identify the issue take a cue from college teams. They are always recording a huge amount of stats throughout the games. For them, there is no “guessing” when it comes to the issues they face during game time. They try to make it as objective, and therefore easy, as possible to make decisions.

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