Mental Focus Over Long Periods of Time

posted on: May 4, 2014
author: Brian Lomax, Ed.D.

Recently, I asked the readers of this blog what challenges they were facing while competing and one of the most popular responses was the ability to focus for long periods of time and that’s what I would like to address in this post.

Let’s start with a bit of background. There are 4 dimensions to focus: Broad, Narrow, Internal, and External. We can combine them into Broad-Internal, Broad-External, Narrow-Internal and Narrow-External. While we are competing, we have various thoughts going through our head that could be categorized into these 4 combinations. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m more interested in the Broad versus Narrow distinction.

Broad Focus

To me, Broad Focus means that we’re thinking about the competitive event as a whole. We’re thinking about things like the significance of the event, winning, the overall score, etc. Basically, this is big picture thinking and it’s absolutely necessary. Most of us are good at this kind of focus and many of our thoughts are on the big picture. Unfortunately, Broad Focus alone doesn’t help you play your best and focusing at this level solely can get exhausting.

Narrow Focus

Almost every sport can be broken down into a set of discrete components and it’s important that we as competitors understand that break down as that will help us establish our Narrow Focus. Let’s look at a few sports and how we can break them down into components:

Football
Football Game > 1^st Half & 2^nd Half > Each Half has 2 Quarters > Each Quarter has multiple possessions > Each possession has one or more plays

Going through this process shows us that in Football, the Play is a very good discrete component that we can use for Narrow Focus. One could even break that down to Six Seconds at a Time – the average length in time of a play.

Tennis
Tennis Match > Has 2 or more sets > Each set has 6 to 13 games > Each game has 4 or more points

In tennis, our Narrow Focus is on the point.

Here are some ideas for Narrow Focal points in other sports:
Basketball: Every possession of the ball and transition from offense to defense and defense to offense
Hockey: Every shift on the ice
Baseball: Every pitch

Other sports may be more difficult to do this so you may have to create some artificial boundaries or components. For example, I worked with a marathon runner a few years ago and we decided to narrow his focus from a 26 mile race to 26 one mile races. He focused on one mile at a time and set a personal best.

The reason we want to understand this discrete component is because that is the level in which we can actually exert control over our performance. Understanding what you can control is a major part of being a great competitor, and we want to get our best performance at each play, point, etc.

Getting to this narrow focal point is only half the battle. In order to improve our ability to focus at this level, rather than just broadly, we need to add routines around the focal point. We need to do the same things all the time on those plays, points, pitches, etc. What we do in between these plays, points, pitches is one of the keys to being mentally tough. Here is an example of what I do on the tennis court:

When a point ends, I immediately focus on two things: my body language and my breathing. I want my body language to display a confident, strong, fighting image. I focus on my breath to help recover from the last point. I always have a towel at the back of the court and I go there to use it whether it’s truly necessary or not. At some point in my walk to the towel or back to the baseline, I press the vibration dampener in my strings as my “Reset Button”. It’s a key component of my routine. I need to completely reset myself (mentally and emotionally) for the next point and I have found that doing something physical like pressing a button makes this work even better. The next point is the most important one now and I want to play my best. As I walk to get into position, I’m still reflecting great body language and I’m visualizing my best tennis. I know that the more great points I play, the more likely that I’m going to get the result I want so I’ve trained myself to be good at Narrow Focus.

To make this really simple: Point – Reset – Point – Reset – Point – Reset, etc. The same goes for every other sport and its narrow focal point. This adds up to a great overall performance.

Enacting this kind of routine in your sport will take time. It will require some additional focus energy at first, but keep doing it. The more you do it, the more automatic it will become. And once it is automatic and that you have completely routinized your narrow focal point, you will find it to be much easier to focus for long periods over the course of your competitive event.