A note about my private practice - Besides general psychotherapy, I’m also working with sports-related matters, such as performance anxiety and symptoms of depression.  Almost all teams in the major sports leagues have a behavioral health professional on board to teach core mental skills to improve effectiveness and avoid mental illness. NBA teams are required to have a full-time mental health specialist according to the Players’ Association contract.  Below are articles on the Mets and the  New York Giants. You can reach me at the “Contact” tab on my website, www.arthurpopp.com.

Dunleavy, R. (2022, October 21). Giants’ sports psychologist Dr. Lani Lawrence integral in team’s renaissance. New York Post. https://nypost.com/2022/10/21/giants-sports-psychologist-integral-in-teams-renaissance/

Wagner, J.(2022, June24) For the Mets, deep breaths, a little chatter and a lot of wins. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/24/sports/baseball/pete-alonso-mets-breathing.html

Now to the S.M.A.R.T. guidelines and goals.

In our last article we talked about a basketball player aiming to hit 70% of her foul shots.  Using the SMART guidelines will help. Here they are:

• S - Specific - Can you imagine seeing this. Yes, we can visualize our player hitting 7 out of 10 foul shots.
• M - Measurable - Certainly. We have a clear number in mind here.
• A - Achievable - Can our player reach this goal?  If we agree she can, game on!
• R - Relevant - Hitting free throws certainly is relevant!
• T - Time sensitive - This is one of the more important guidelines. If she strives to reach this goal by the fourth week of the season, she is more likely to reach 70% by that date.

A Coaching Point - Keep in mind that these are guidelines only.  Don’t let them get you or your players in a bind and frustrated! An example is a pickleball player we’ll call Cindy. Cindy is - trying to increase the number of  shots she hits down the middle between her two opponents.  It’s tough to Measure unless you have a camera  to catch all the action. Then, there are judgment calls about what is in the middle!  Yes, the goal is achievable. Is it relevant? Certainly, hitting down the middle, and preferably low to the opponents’ feet, is definitely relevant.  What about time-sensitive? Yes, Cindy can aim to do better at hitting down the middle within 3 weeks time.  Again, we have to keep in mind that Cindy is playing pickleball in part for the challenge and for recreation. She’s got a full-time job and a family.  Plus, if she sets this goal in early April, spring showers can get in the way of getting in practice time and playing! For sure, goal-setting and using the S.M.A.R.T. guidelines are not easy tasks. We benefit from these skills when we treat them like an art –  something we work on and cultivate over time. Enjoy the summer! I’m looking forward to seeing you at the Suffolk Zone’s (NYS-AHPERD) November 7^th Conference where I’ll be presenting on a sports psychology topic.

Welcome back! In our first blog we talked about focusing in competition and introduced The Process of Alabama’s Coach Nick Saban.  Saban is viewed by many as the dean of collegiate football. He’s won 7 national championships. Rece Davis, the ESPN commentator, described Saban’s process this way:

The Process is briliant in its simplicity. If you simply execute what's important at the moment to the best of your ability, without undue regard for outome, your chances of...getting the result you want increase exponentially. It sounds great, until you actually have to chase worry about winning or pressure or outside expectations out of your mind (from the preface to P. Savage’s 4^th and Goal Every Day. 2017). So what does the Process look and feel like in action?  First, let’s recognize that focusing is a skill like shooting foul shots, or  throwing a baseball or softball. To build focusing skills, we mainly exercise two parts of the midbrain, the amygdala and the left side of the hippocampus. On our varsity football team, we do at least five minutes of exercising these parts of the brain.  Many people would describe this type of exercise as mindfulness meditation -  attending to what we’re doing right now, not the past or future, or our emotions and feelings. To describe The Process experience, I’ll use my experience playing pickleball because the key points are fairly simple. Pickleball is a game growing in popularity that is like tennis but on a notably smaller court. As a result volleys go back and forth much faster. I typically play doubles with my wife. I know that if I return 80% of the shots I’m able to return, we most likely will win. My stance and stroke are good, so I don’t have to pay much attention to those two pieces.  All I have to do is attend to each volley as it comes. This is analogous to Coach Saban teaching his players to execute one play at a time to the best of their ability.

Here’s a picture of the yellow pickleball coming over the net toward me.  You’re right, it’s not too exciting! In part, that’s the point.  I transfer my practicing in focusing described above to locking on to the yellow ball, and simply returning each volley, one after another. In fact, the attention required to  visually lock on the ball  all the way through the stroke on every stroke  takes up a lot of mental energy, especially with the speed at which volleys go back and forth. As a result, if I’m really focused, there’s little room for anything else cognitively, especially disruptive thoughts. I’ll follow up next time with how to coach Saban’s Process along with examples.