posted on: January 12, 2019
author: Brian Lomax, Ed.D.
When I think of the most powerful mindsets that a competitor can have, this one stands out: You have to LOVE to learn more about your sport. The best competitors in the world are great students of their game without exception. Are you? Do you have a love for learning in your sport?
When I talk to young athletes about having a love of learning, the reaction isn’t always great. I get it. When kids hear the word learning, they automatically associate it with school and for many of them, they don’t exactly love to go to school. But sport isn’t the same as school, and hopefully you do love to play your sport. And if you want to get better at it, you have to learn some stuff. Some of that stuff will be hard like learning a double axel in figure skating or how to hit a kick serve in tennis. It takes time and patience, and it can be frustrating. But if you love the learning process, you’ll master those skills eventually.
As players improve and solidify their technique, a different set of hard lessons presents itself. They are competitive lessons. The most difficult of these lessons to learn from are those losses or performances that stir up negative emotions such as disappointment and frustration. It’s not fun to go back and review a bad performance, and no one loves to do that, but you must. Check out this 1 minute video with Kobe Bryant on the value of going through that exercise.
If you are to improve competitively, it’s imperative that you have a process for learning from all of your performances, good and bad. Don’t let the emotional impact of a performance be a barrier to examining it. If that happens, you’ll get stuck at your current level or slow down your growth. Perhaps you can turn that one bad performance into motivation to never let it happen again. Think about what that could do to your upcoming performances. I have experienced the power of this personally. In 2014, I played poorly at a national event and was very disappointed in myself. I committed to correcting that and learning from it, and the result was one of the best seasons of my competitive career.
An additional barrier to learning is the statement “I know that.” It’s a sign of close-mindedness or perhaps even a bit of arrogance. Do you really know that? For while you may know some bit of information, perhaps you don’t know as much as you think you do. Perhaps it would be a good idea to get a refresher on the concept being discussed. You might actually learn something new.
We also have to recognize that there is a difference between knowing and doing. Having knowledge in your head, but not applying it in your performances is useless. For example, some years ago I visited a tennis academy and I was working with the players on an in-between points routine. One of the players said he already knew the routine, and he was right. He did know it. But then I asked him if he was using the routine on the court in his matches, and he looked at me like I was crazy. He wasn’t using it.
In sport, you have to apply your knowledge. That’s where the actual learning happens, and that’s how you improve. While arrogance may be one barrier to learning, there are others such as peer pressure, unwillingness to get out of your comfort zone, and lack of motivation. Be on the lookout for these barriers, and remind yourself that if you want to be great, you have to do the things most people are unwilling to do. You have to be special. Special people love to learn. Loving to learn will make you even more special. What can you learn today?
Dr. Brian Lomax founded PerformanceXtra™ in 2009 with a mission of helping athletes achieve their goals and their top performances more consistently through a progression of mental skills that enables them to focus on what is truly important.
Learn more about the author: https://performancextra.com/brian-lomax/