The Center for Integrated Research’s proprietary approach to “brain systems science” can be used to develop and implement some effective training techniques for generating successful mental attitudes and strategies among young athletes. These techniques are based on two key premises that are fundamental to brain systems science—first, as complex, adaptive systems, we humans are fundamentally designed to move and constantly adapt to the demands of our respective environments; second, in order to engage the highly sophisticated movements demanded of humans by their physical, social, and cultural environments, our brain systems are endowed with certain motivational and adaptive tools, such as emotions and other “emergent phenomena” like conscious mind, ego, and strategic thinking capabilities.
Given these dynamics, we begin our program with the understanding that because human development only occurs in junction with specific conditions within one’s physical, social, and cultural environments, it is always important to be aware of those environmental influences and the degree to which we can control them, or not. This is especially applicable to the development of young athletes, as their minds are open, impressionable, and constantly changing.
So, coaching points #1 and 2 :
- Coaches and parents of young athletes should encourage them to pay attention to their situational environments and consciously acknowledge how they are feeling affected by them and whether or not those environmental factors are things they can control. The best thing athletes can do when they feel the (performance) “pressure of the moment” is to be mindful of it and avoid being affected by environmental factors (e.g., distractions from opponents or onlookers) that are beyond their control.
- We each have our own set of natural physical and mental skills, and limitations, but we are not stuck with them for life—we can always learn new skills, grow into new ways of thinking and perceiving, change our ways of being. Coaches and parents should help their young athletes adopt a “growth” mindset and embrace the idea of life long improvement.
What makes our human bodies and our brains both complex and highly
adaptive is captured in the robustness of their feedback systems. Being
fundamentally designed to move means that are brains are constantly formulating goals related to movement and making predictions about what those planned movements will produce by way of consequences.
So, coaching point #3:
- It is important to help young athletes see their “mistakes” and failures to perform as part of a natural process by which the brain keeps reducing its “prediction errors”. In other words, to really become accomplished, a person must make a lot of miscalculations and use the feedback from the “mistakes” to reduce future prediction errors. (With respect to the physical aspects of athletic training, this process is often referred to as developing “muscle memory.”) This leads to the old adage that “practice makes perfect”, but the key is to help young athletes accept their performance errors as part of an inevitable process their brains must follow; that will help them avoid dwelling on their mistakes (whether physical or mental) or becoming unduly emotional about them, which then makes it possible to focus on the actual feedback their brains are receiving about their “prediction errors.” The more athletes of any age can learn to absorb the informational feedback, assess the precise nature of a performance mishap, and use that information to self-correct in the midst of performance, the more accomplished they will become at their sport of choice.
Speaking of emotion, it is also vitally important that young athletes learn that emotions are natural sources of motivation to encourage certain kinds of movement rather than painful experiences to be avoided. Obviously, though, it is equally important that different emotions be deployed at the right time, for the right purposes. For example, anger, which is one of our seven basic human emotions, can motivate us to do something about a situation that makes us unhappy, but it can also lead to other counterproductive experiences as well, even forms of self-loathing.
So, coaching point #4:
- Coaches and parents of young athletes should help them learn to identify their emotions during their athletic activities. Fear, perhaps of losing a match or looking incompetent, is a motivating emotion but often leads to other counterproductive emotions such as anger and disgust, even contempt. If the object of those emotions is the self, or ego, that can cause lasting, negative self-image. Emotions like fear, anger, and disgust should be seen as short-term motivators for change, but then released and forgotten. On the other hand, emotions like surprise or sadness can be used both to motivate an athlete to try harder and discard the negative effects of fear, anger, disgust, or contempt. For example, using surprise in the vein of “wow, that was a lousy (basketball, tennis, hockey, soccer, golf) shot, I wonder where that came from—oh, well, let me see what actually happened there, learn, and move on” can be a very useful response to a failed attempt in sports. And of course, other emotions like joy and happiness can be emphasized as great motivators to keep a young athlete’s interest in a sport and motivate them to keep improving.
As earlier mentioned, our human brain systems have developed many other adaptive tools, usually as the demands of our ancestors’ environments have required it. (For example, as our social systems became more complex and we required more robust communication skills, our human brain systems managed to
invent and develop written languages, and then our brains/minds learned how to read, write, and transfer information using those languages.) Essentially, what “emerges” from the many different computational functions and feedback systems of the modern human brain is a consciousness that includes everything from awareness that we exist and have distinct agency in the world around us to the more individualized senses of who are, what we want out of life, and so forth.
So, coaching point # 5:
- Coaches and parents should help their young athletes grasp that they have minds that are powerful and important; that much of what goes on in their minds happens outside their conscious awareness and with conscious effort they can develop positive attitudes to condition their minds; and that much of what goes on in the mind, consciously or not, can impact what goes on in their brains and how they ultimately perform in their athletic endeavors. Equally importantly, young athletes should be trained to keep their minds focused on the present, not the past or the future. Their brain systems are geared to take in current information in order to make effective predictions, and if the mind is forcing the brain to focus on something that happened in the past or might eventuate in the future, their brain systems are handicapped in their ability to gather vital information about current conditions and demands (not to mention the waste of time and energy that occurs when their brain systems are focused on past events or speculating about future ones).