By the time he had retired at the end of the 2023 season, football  Coach Nick Saban of Alabama had won 7 national NCAA national titles.  Saban encouraged his players to disregard the clutter in their heads and focus on what they were doing at the moment, one play at a time. This is a variation on mindfulness-being highly focused on what we’re doing in the here and now. The clutter in our heads can certainly mess things up. Just ask anyone who has served a match point in tennis or pickleball. Russ Harris, a well-known therapist wrote, “Our thoughts and feelings ‘hook’ us: they hook our attention, reel us in, jerk us around, and pull us off track.” (Russ Harris, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Made Simple, 2^nd ed, p. 20). Here’s where some principles of sports psychology help.   Working on our biceps or triceps in the gym strengthens our arms. A brief form of meditation, or even a standard meditation exercise, helps develop key parts of our brain and nervous system so we can stay highly focused on what we’re doing.  Next, we can build our enhanced attention skills into what we do in any sport.  In a serve in pickleball, there are distinct steps, such as taking a stance to serve. Next, we  notice and name any disruptive thought or emotion or clutter, as Saban would call it. Then, we move forward from a back foot, focus intently down on the ball, and follow through with the serve. Note that the skill or habit of the serve includes both the physical movements and distinct actions in our consciousness. The conscious habits are noticing and naming any disruptive thought or emotion and then focusing intently on the ball. These mental skills act to clear out the clutter that can get in the way of improving our performance.

I’ve talked to lots of teachers over the past 2 years. As you well know, many have faced high stress during the pandemic and that’s been very hard on them and their students. I am confident that we can do a better job equipping ourselves with the skills and habits needed to face the challenges of adversities like the pandemic. The CDC has said that Covid may be back in a form that could have an impact this fall, especially when the weather turns colder. Hopefully, whatever variant appears will be nowhere as harmful as those we’ve already faced. And, many Americans are fully vaccinated.  Dr. Ann Eckardt Erlanger of Suffolk County Psychological Association (SCPA) looked into programs available for large groups on training in mental health.  It appears there are few quality programs out there. This could affect you and your school or district.  So I’d like to suggest a program that we’ve already paid for with our tax dollars.  The United Nations, through the World Health Organization, initially developed “Doing What Matters in Times of Stress” for aid workers in war-torn countries, particularly Syria and Uganda. As a service created by the W.H.O., the research is substantial. It comes in many languages. The English version is about 40 pages. I found it easy to grasp and practice.  There are also five audio tapes that support the reading. You can download the manual and the audio tapes for no charge. Again, we’ve already paid for the program’s development. Very importantly, learning “Doing What Matters in Times of Stress (a Self-Help + program of the W.H.O.)” can be done on your own or in a relatively large group up to 30. The program teaches five skills. I’ve tweaked versions of the skills for use with the teams I’ve coached including boy’s football, girl’s flag football, and soccer. Here’s a video by the W.H.O. about “Doing What Matters in Times of Stress.” It’s just over two minutes long: The program does something very important: It emphasizes lots of practice so we’re ready to use the skills when needed. This addresses a weakness of many mental health and social-emotional learning programs - not including sufficient practice to build the skills. Check it out. Here’s the reference for an English version. This is the version I was referring to above. Doing What Matters in Times of Stress: An Illustrated Guide. Adapted Version for the Caribbean. Washington, D.C. Pan American Health Organization.2021. License: C By-NC. SA 3.0 IGO. https://doi.org/10.37774/9789275123935. If you'd like help in implementing, email me or call.  A disclaimer- I receive no remuneration from the W.H.O. or the U.N.! Have a great summer!

I hope you can join me this spring for three presentations I’ll be doing. March 16^th at 4:00 PM. – Selecting a Social-Emotional Learning Program: Key Factors (virtual)  for school psychologists of the Suffolk County Psychological Association as well as anyone who is interested. Contact me if you’d like to attend. I’ll send you the link. March 25 at the Nassau Zone Conference of NYS AHPERD at Adelphi University,
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Skills in Varsity & Youth Sports. NYS AHPERD emails will have the pertinent information. May 6^th- I’ll be participating on a panel with Drs. Deena Abbe and Greg Haggerty on Building a Better Athlete: Using Psychology to Help Athletes, for the Suffolk County Psychological Association (SCPA). Again, everyone is welcome. Here’s the link.  On that page the workshops are listed along the right side. We’re May 6^th. Here’s our follow-up to the December 2021 blog about the Learning & Performance climate. What I’ll do here is suggest a visual to use in making the point that our goal is to get our players in an optimal place or “frame of mind.” I’ll also list four additional steps to build your team’s learning and performance climate. You can access the December 2021 blog here. Let’s take an example.  Angie is a fictitious player on our girls’ flag football team. Let’s say she joined the team in her 9^th grade year, and showed a lot of promise. Angie is a bit shy. As a new team member, she seemed to often be “treading lightly,” as if she didn’t want to make a mistake or draw attention to herself. She was athletic and had done well, but seemed  anxious. How can we help her? First, we use the two heads graphic that we described last time and is inserted just below.  On the left side is a player’s head full of thoughts and worries.  On the right side, that player has “dealt” with those concerns in a variety of ways, at least for the time that she is playing.  As a result, she can focus better. Another way to help get this idea across is through the Yerkes-Dodson Inverted U-curve. Yes, it is a “mouthful.” It relates motivation and drive to performance.  Motivation and drive can also include anxiety. This is a teaching device that has been used for decades.  Here it is: On the chart the left (vertical or y-axis) is performance or how we do in a practice or game. The horizontal axis (x-axis) is motivation or drive. If we move along the x-axis just a bit, we can then  go vertically until we reach the curve. By then going horizontally back to the left to the y-axis, we see the “Performance” level which isn’t too high. Once our motivation or drive (x-axis) is in a moderate to fairly high range (space with the diagonal lines), we’re at a high level on the curve. When we go horizontally to the y-axis, the corresponding point on the y-axis is near or close to the top of the y-axis or absissa- maximum performance.  However, and here’s a key point- if Angie  is too driven or overly anxious,  performance( the far right on the x-axis) begins to drop off. That optimal level of drive is also known as "flow" (Kaufman, Glass, & Pineau, 2018, pp. 48-59) or “being in the zone.” I’ve often heard athletes from the 2022 Winter Games talking about being in a place where they’re having fun.  This is the optimal level of the curve (with the diagonal lines). So, we can help our athletes get to a comfortable place, a place “in the zone” or a point of “flow” by:

1. Using the “Two-Heads” graphic from the previous blog (Dec. 12, 2021)  on the learning and performance climate. Also, we can use the inverted curve described above to decrease “brain clutter.”

Also from the previous blog we can:

2. Teach living one play or one action at a time, just executing what comes next without biases or thinking about  the past or the future (including the scoreboard.) It’s the quality of what we do  moment to momentthat counts. Coach Nick Saban of the Alabama Crimson Tide (6 national titles, and one with L.S.U.) describes this “Process” approach at about the 2:25 mark of a video we showed in our first blog.  I've inserted it again here.

3. Something that naturally fits with a process approach is paying attention to what we can control, and leaving to the side what we can’t.  There is little to no value in  ruminating about what we can’t control.
4. As coaches, we can regularly use a lot of reinforcement. We described this, along with a video of Coach Ted Newsome doing it in our July 30 blog, “The Process, Part 3.”  Here’s the link to that video:

5. Regularly do exercises to build focusing skills.  We’ll talk about these in future blogs.

Through the steps above we were able to help Angie build her skills and her confidence over the course of the season. She is better equipped to make a substantial contribution to the team. I'm looking forward to your comments. See you next time!

References

Kaufman, K., Glass, C. and Pineau, T. (2018) Mindful sport performance enhancement. Washington, D.C. :The American Psychological Association.

Hi and Seasons Greetings, I’ll be speaking on three occasions this spring.  On March 16 the topic will be “Selecting a Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Program” for school psychologists. On March 25 the topic will be Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Skills, Varsity & Youth Sports” for the Nassau Zone of the New York State Association of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance at Adelphi University. I’ll be part of a panel along with Drs. Deena Abbe and Greg Haggerty discussing “Psychology and Sports, an Update.”  It will be a continuing education program for the Suffolk County Psychological Association on April 1st.  For more information on any of these presentations, go to the “Contact” tab and send me a note.

Improving the Learning and Performance Climate

A lot has been said recently about the Learning Climate and the Performance Climate.  We want to give our athletes the best chance to learn their sport’s skills and to perform well in game situations. How can we do this? A number of concepts we’ve previously talked about in this series of blogs directly impact the Learning Climate and the Performance Climate. “What’s in a Player’s Head?” is a graphic at the end. We can improve the learning and performance climate by helping our players reduce what Coach Nick Saban (football coach at U. of Alabama and 7-time national champion) calls “Clutter.”Clutter – or disruptive thoughts and emotions - get in the way of our athlete’s performance. On the left side our player has a “mind full” of problem thoughts and emotions.  On the right side,  s/he is in a better state. How can we get our player over to the right side? We referred to the following quote in our first blog. I think it’s worth repeating. Herm Edwards, who has had a long coaching career at Arizona State and in the NFL (Tampa Bay, Kansas City, and the New York Jets) said: “Every play in football (the NFL) – every play- someone messes up. Most of the time, it’s not physical. It’s mental (Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit,  p. 79).” All of us can remember a striking example of one of our players making a mental error. Our first step is to help our players reduce anxiety or tension by regularly letting them know the following: what is most important is their  play in the present moment, not the past or the future, including the score on the scoreboard. We execute one moment at a time. We also want to help our players manage disruptive emotions. This is directly from coach Sabin, i.e. one play at a time and attend to our personal “internal” scoreboard;  don’t dwell on the “external” scoreboard. We can get this message across by actually emphasizing what our players do moment to moment or play by play, in practice and games,  not the score.  We do this through a lot of reinforcement and encouragement. We described  this in detail in our July 30^th blog about Coach Saban’s Process along with a video of Coach Ted Newsome actually doing this during a football lineman drill. Yes, I know I’m not saying anything new here about encouragement. On the other hand, I’m a firm believer in “Doing the Basics Well.” And lots of reinforcement along with a distinctly positive attitude from us as coaches go a long way.  Now, you can certainly share with your athletes that we can only control what we do.  Having said that, we can also scout the opposition and be as well prepared for them as we can. Also, our players should not be concerned with their teammates’ execution. It’s enough of a challenge for each individual to bring their “A” game. After that, our control over matters is limited; again we focus on performing at our “max” moment to moment. Besides emphasizing our players’ performance and not the “external” score, we can  build the skills of focusing through exercising brain tissue,  like we build other muscles. We build stronger upper arm muscles (biceps and triceps)  by doing push-ups and planks. We build the “abs” or abdominal muscles by doing crunches, leg raises, and legs scissors. We develop focusing skills by strengthening two parts of the midbrain, the amygdala and the left side of the hippocampus. The amygdala plays a big role in “flight or fight” as well as other emotions. The left side of the hippocampus which sits right near the amygdala, is responsible for retaining the memory of what we do in those situations. Strengthening the portions of the brain to improve focus can also be called mindfulness meditation.  The term “Mindfulness meditation” can have negative connotations for some people.  I’ve found that athletes are comfortable with viewing this type of exercise as simply building focusing by working on breathing. In summary, how can we positively impact our teams’ learning climate and performance climate? Or, for our graphic, how do we get our players from a "mind full" as in the left side to improved focus on the right side? We do this by limiting “Clutter” through:

1. Living one play at a time or one action at a time with decreased attention to the past or future, or disruptive emotions.  Again, this is from Coach Saban’s Process and the Internal versus the External Scoreboard.
2. Lots of reinforcement.
3. Attend to what we can Control.
4. Do exercises in focusing and breathing to strengthen portions of the brain.

Enjoy the Holidays!

I'm looking forward to seeing you on August 25 at 7:00 P.M. for the webinar I'll be doing for NYS AHPERD (New York State Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance) on Social-Emotional Learning, Varsity & Youth Sports. Hi and welcome back. I'll be talking about what Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Skills and Coach Nick Saban's "The Process" look like when working with our athletes. Saban is the Head Coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide. He has racked up seven collegiate football championships. Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) skills is a very broad topic. If you've come to my blog to get more information about how these skills can help your student athletes perform better and grow on and off the field, you're in the right place! I also  firmly believe that all of us who  coach have a tremendous impact for good in the challenging world faced by our athletes. I'll say a few words about this from time to time. Besides teaching SEL skills I'm the offensive and defensive line coach for boys football and an assistant coach for girls flag football at Far Rockaway H.S. in Queens.  I've also coached inter-town junior and senior boys soccer. What I'll do here is lay out three key parts of Saban's Process and then relate those three  to working with our linemen. My goal is to give you an exacting view of what it looks and sounds like, or as best as I can in this blog.  The  goal is that you'll be able to replicate The Process with your athletes. Three parts of The Process are key. You can visit our first blog at my website to find a video on Coach Saban and The Process that runs about four minutes.

1. Saban asks his players and staff to concentrate on the moment, not the past nor future. He also asks his players to disregard disruptive emotions. Yes, you're  right- there is overlap with mindfulness meditation. This is part of the emotional or executive function part of social-emotional learning (SEL).
2. It is a Process!  It takes the form of one behavior or skill after another after another.
3. High standards. Being the Crimson Tide, they can afford an exceptional number of coaches to give just about individual attention to all their  players.  That results in each player having a very high bar to meet plus a very clear  image of what that bar looks like.  As an aside, this is simply basic management – giving people exactingly clear images and expectations of what their job is. Again, setting our own standards is part of the executive function or emotional piece of SEL

On an offensive play, we've identified about 12 separate sub-skills to the starting stance at the line of scrimmage. We've taken a major skill, the stance for a running play, and divided it into a number of sub-skills that can be easily taught and reinforced to build a solid base.  This is a three-point stance in which  both feet are on the ground along with one hand that is also down. Some of these skills include (note how specific and observable we get!) :

1. Both feet flat on the ground, the foot that is furthest from the ball  is also  slightly further back than theother foot by a few inches(Also known as the "stagger.").
2. Our weight is on the instep of our feet.  This allows for maximum thrust or "push"  forward when the ball is snapped.
3. When Jake gets into his  three-point stance, we want his
   1. Head up,
   2. Chest out,
   3. Back flat or almost flat  and parallel to the ground. One hand is on the ground while he rests his free hand  on his  thigh near his knee.

To reinforce my linemen for getting in the three-point stance correctly, I might say:

"O.K., Jake, good position of your feet."

"Nice flat back, Jeff."

"That's it, head up, Way to go, Jaden." If one of my players is missing part of the stance, I want to give feedback, and most importantly, reinforce him as soon as possible for making the needed adjustment. What we're modeling is a super important SEL skill. Positive reinforcement is the name of this game! For example: "OK, David, keep your head up focusing on the opposing defender."

And, in response to David's adjusting:

"That's it, David. You  clearly see the defender. " From the stance we'll move on to the next step in The Process  for our offensive  linemen.  This is  firing off or taking a first step immediately on the correct cadence of the quarterback. Our quarterback says "Hut, Hut, Hut."  The center snaps the ball to the quarterback and the play starts on the first, second, or third "Hut." So, the next step in The Process is firing off, or uncoiling, very quickly on the right "Hut." Firing off includes beginning to bring elbows close to the body in anticipation of our linemen getting their hands up toward the opposing defender. Now, we'll give our players lots of drill, or "reps"  with plenty of positive feedback. I'll have our guys on a line doing reps of 1) getting in the three point stance, and then 2) firing off on the right cadence count.  I'll play our quarterback shouting  the cadence. To reinforce my linemen taking those first steps correctly, I'll say things like:

"That's it Dave, way to fire off!"

"Jaden, Super! Good speed on the snap(moving on the right cadence)"

" OK , Zeke, good first step." And I'll be giving feedback as needed.

"Way to go Jake, Just bring your elbows in closer to your body as you go forward." I will also praise our guys when they praise or reinforce each other. This is truly critical  for me because I want them to acquire this life-long skill of having a kind word for others,especially in times when it's not obviously in order. What I mean by "not obviously in order" is that we all naturally cheer and praise our players for great passes, super tackles, and solid blocks.  We want them to build the habit of praising teammates for small gains, even on not-so-obvious  skills in the overall Process.  This has also been known as Catching Them Being Good. And, once Jake's got it, I'll say something like, "That's it Jake. YES!!" Now, Catching Them Being Good- reinforcing the small but key steps- can take a lot of forms. There's how often we praise our players, our tone of voice, how loud we are, etc.  I've supplied a link to one tape of Coach Ted Newsome, a great football line coach,so you can actually see and hear an effective coach in action. For your reference, the name of the full video is "Ted Newsome – Coaching the Drive Block, Traps, and Pulls." The segment we're interested in begins at about the 4:24 mark and goes about a minute, "Drive and Direction Drills." Note how Coach praises the players in a quiet, yet distinct manner after each rep.  It's really a part of him. Again, many variations of reinforcement/praise  are possible, as long as you're doing it! And that is the tough part- lots of reinforcement/support on a regular basis for your athletes. So, to summarize:

1. First, our coaches and our players know we are living in the present to perform these skills at a high level. We're not concerning ourselves with problem emotions, the past or the future.
2. It is a Process. We want to line up the small, manageable skills and sub-skills one after the otherthat our players can execute.
3. High Standards: We hold Jake and all our players  to a very high standard. Jake takes a quiet  pride in meeting our expectations, and a general aura of pursuing that high level has taken hold with our players .I really think they get "pumped" on their own and the  group's  success.  Yes, and plenty of praise/reinforcement/compliements!

That leads us to our next blog where we'll talk about the learning and performance climate, Coach Saban's comments on the "internal" and "external" scoreboard, a growth mindset, and the elephant in the room- managing the drive to win. See you next time!

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.

Hi and Welcome!   My goal in this series of blogs is to begin a conversation about using social-emotional learning (SEL) to further our athletes' life skills.  In so doing, our teams will be more successful. We'll also go a step beyond the core life skills so we can add to everyone's toolkit. Let's start with focusing, one of the most important self management skills. A few years ago, our football team at Far Rockaway High School was playing a Queens rival. As the opposing team's players came off their bus at our field our coach said to me , "Art, look at the back of their jerseys." On the back of each jersey was a number, but no last name above it. Instead, there was just one word, "Focus." On every jersey. I'm sure everyone can relate a story about a player not focusing and the negative outcome that resulted. Herm Edwards, who has had a long coaching career at Arizona State and in the NFL (Tampa Bay, Kansas City, and New York Jets) said this about his experience at Tampa Bay: "Every play in football- every play- someone messes up. Most of the time, it's not physical. It’s mental (Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit, p. 79) How do we train our players to focus better?  A good place to start is with Coach Nick Saban's "The Process." Saban has won seven national college football championships, one at Louisiana State and six at Alabama, the last just this past season. One of the best descriptions of The Process is by Rece Davis, an ESPN commentator, in his Foreward to Phil Savage's 2017 book on Alabama football  entitled, 4^th and Goal Every Day.

"How does Saban do it? The Process is brilliant in its simplicity. If you simply execute what's important at the moment to the best of your ability, without undue regard for outcome, 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 my vantage point; this hasn't been merely a step-by-step get-rich-quick scheme. It's an entirely different mental approach. It's training the mind…it’s finding joy and fulfillment in the moment…" The "joy" comes from our regularly achieving success in frequent, manageable steps- even daily. We can view it as the driving force behind a growth mindset because the sense of achievement we experience motivates us on to the next manageable step, and on and on. Here's a link to a brief video where, at the 2:35 minute mark, Saban is being interviewed by an ESPN commentator about the Process. The video begins with his players chanting "Get your mind right!" before the start of a game. So, what does the Process feel like in action? I'll describe that in our next blog. In the meantime, please respond with your thoughts and questions on the "Contact" page at my website, www.arthurpopp.com or at drpopp2@gmail.com