The Performance Mindset E-Book

Anthony J. Klarica

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 469

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Learn the lessons of elite athletes to reach your full potential

From acclaimed psychologist Anthony Klarica, The Performance Mindset: 7 steps to success in sport and life reveals the lessons of high-performing athletes and shows how you can build strategies to apply for greater success in sport, business or in your personal life.

High performers are made, not born. High performance occurs through putting a careful and deliberate focus on growing mindset, and science proves that high-performers intentionally build these mindset skills and habits to maximise their opportunities. Talent and hard work are simply not enough.

Through candid, in-depth interviews and stories from a wide variety of Australian athletes, you’ll learn how to:

• harness and maintain your motivation
• become resilient
• stay focussed and present
• lead yourself and others
• protect your mental health and wellbeing.

Natural talent doesn’t necessarily equal high performance. With The Performance Mindset: 7 steps to success in sport and life, you’ll discover how to unleash your inner-champion and realise your full and unbridled potential, whether in sport, in business, or in life.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: MADE NOT BORN

Laying a mindset foundation

Early success does not guarantee future success

The mindset to keep going

Attitude nurtures talent

You grow in the direction of your focus

Is talent overrated?

Assessing mindset variables

Enjoyment matters

How much practice?

Many different paths

Patience and persistence

Early bolters and late bloomers

Reasons for leaving

Tough transition

McDonald's to Olympics

Maintaining discipline

Environments that help performance

Talent doesn't coach you

Summary

STEP 1: HARNESS YOUR MOTIVATION

The seven summits

Action ignites motivation

Intrinsic and extrinsic drivers

Multiple motivators

Competence, autonomy and relatedness

Engagement

Choices and sacrifices

No one is superhuman

Goal setting

Benchmarking

Expectation and motivation

Rewards and positive feedback

Self‐positivity and celebration

Motivational dynamics

Environment and culture

Task and ego

Managing motivational challenges

Passion, meaning and purpose

Summary

STEP 2: BOOST YOUR RESILIENCE

Mat's mantra: Always keep riding

Aim to be resilient

Break it down into smaller parts

Ride the roller‐coaster with multiple resilience strategies

Resilience grows with an open mind

A learning approach to building resilience

Keep going: injuries, disappointments and setbacks

Learning to lose

Life challenges

Explanatory style

Optimism helps resilience

Reflecting, reviewing, debriefing and feedback

Team resilience

Navigating transition and other vulnerable times

Adaptive perfectionism and flexibility

Summary

STEP 3: SHARPEN YOUR FOCUS

Self‐talk: you are what you think

‘The little voice’

Technical, tactical and emotional self‐talk

Positive, negative or neutral and curious self‐talk

Mantras

Internal or external focus

Narrow or broad: switching focus

Getting in the zone or flow

Self‐regulation

Secondary errors

Being in the present

Attention to detail

Focus on what you can control

Visual and physical cues

Body language

Use of time

Chunking and race plans

Routines and clarity

Summary

STEP 4: CHAMPION YOUR LEADERSHIP

Diamonds: leadership by example

Influence

The

what

and the

how

of leadership

Leading self

Leading culture

Leading others

Leading situations

Leading structure and systems

Leadership growth

Formal and informal leadership

Leadership density

Leadership groups

Captain class

Leadership qualities

Summary

STEP 5: FOSTER YOUR CULTURE

Culture in practice

Thinking, decisions and behaviour

High‐performance environments

Individual athlete and coach influence on culture

Cultural consistency

Psychological safety

Learn and grow

Emotional intelligence

Relationships and communication

Mastery climate

The New Zealand All Blacks

Building culture

Challenges to culture

Building a good culture is hard; keeping a good culture is harder

Summary

STEP 6: PROTECT YOUR WELLBEING

No one is immune

Find the positive

Person first, athlete second

Athlete‐centred environments

Look beyond the behaviour

Wellbeing and mental health

Destigmatising wellbeing and mental health

Incidence of wellbeing and mental health concerns in sport

Prevention is better than cure

Self‐appreciation, self‐permission, self‐acceptance and self‐compassion

Gratitude and kindness

Journaling

Sport relationship and identity

Taking action

Help‐seeking

The journey and narrative

Recovery, rest and sleep

Cognitive behaviour therapy and thinking traps

Environment, thinking and doing

Mindfulness and ACT

Diaphragmatic breathing

Supports and mentors

Wellbeing programs and data

Wellbeing checklist

Summary

STEP 7: EXECUTE YOUR PERFORMANCE

Behind the scenes in Rome

Psychological characteristics and personality

Mental skills of high performers

Individual mindset plans

Lifestyle

Performance platform

Confidence and competence

Imagery and visualisation

Mental skills programs

Mental skills for juniors

Learn competitiveness

Maximising effort: intrinsic and extrinsic strategies

Clutch and flow

Set up for sub‐two‐hour marathon speed

Create and execute a simple plan

Great performances

Embracing new situations and challenges

Meaning contributes to performance

Strengths win battles

Managing performance anxiety and nerves

Managing nerves through reframing

Taking control of nerves

Optimism and positivity

Many paths to high performance

Summary

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

Introduction: Made not born

Step 1: Harness your motivation

Step 2: Boost your resilience

Step 3: Sharpen your focus

Step 4: Champion your leadership

Step 5: Foster your culture

Step 6: Protect your wellbeing

Step 7: Execute your performance

INDEX

END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT

List of Tables

Chapter 2

Table 2.1: a resilience model

List of Illustrations

Chapter 2

Figure 2.1: Resilience compass

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1: understand your what and how

Figure 4.2: the SCOS leadership pyramid

Chapter 5

Figure 5.1: psychological safety and performance standards

Chapter 6

Figure 6.1: cognitive behaviour therapy model

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

About the Author

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction: Made not born

Begin Reading

Conclusion

References

Index

End User License Agreement

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THE PERFORMANCE MINDSET

7 STEPS TO SUCCESS IN SPORT AND LIFE

ANTHONY J. KLARICA

First published in 2022 by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd

42 McDougall St, Milton Qld 4064Office also in Melbourne

© John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 2022

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

ISBN: 978‐0‐730‐39468‐6

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 (for example, a fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review), no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. All inquiries should be made to the publisher at the address above.

Cover design by WileyCover Image: © Supersmario/Getty Images

Disclaimer

The material in this publication is of the nature of general comment only, and does not represent professional advice. It is not intended to provide specific guidance for particular circumstances and it should not be relied on as the basis for any decision to take action or not take action on any matter which it covers. Readers should obtain professional advice where appropriate, before making any such decision. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the author and publisher disclaim all responsibility and liability to any person, arising directly or indirectly from any person taking or not taking action based on the information in this publication.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony J Klarica is passionate about people and their performance and wellbeing. He has been heavily involved in sport all his life, starting at a young age. He has competed in athletics, tennis, cricket, Australian rules football, triathlon, endurance events and many other sports from social to high level. He has also been a track and field coach and coached a running squad, The Nail, with athletes who achieved high performance levels and became lifelong friends.

Professionally, Anthony has worked for over 30 years as a psychologist, coach and high‐performance manager in a wide variety of sports. He has worked with AFL teams, including Melbourne, Carlton as well as Hawthorn during their Grand Final three‐peat, the AFL umpiring squad, a wide variety of motorsports including V8 Supercar drivers, road and off‐road motorbike riders, tennis players and a wide variety of Olympic sport organisations and individual athletes. He has travelled extensively to work with individual athletes and teams at state and national events, world championships and Olympics. He has sat in coaches boxes and been on the interchange with players at football matches, attended Grand Slams and spent time in the pit lane to apply his trade. This has involved consulting and coaching in leadership, culture, wellbeing, performance and one‐on‐one counselling over many years, mainly through his Melbourne‐based business, Elite Performance.

He is a lifelong learner with an undergraduate degree in education and master's degrees in psychology and business, and has attended many short courses and workshops along the way. He has consulted on and delivered many workshops and presentations in the education and corporate sectors as well as sport. This work was built on the foundation of being a teacher and psychologist in a variety of settings, including working as a psychologist in schools, in industrial rehabilitation and a hospital setting.

Through his extensive work in education, he also founded the Six‐Star Wellbeing and Engagement Survey, which has been used by more than 45 000 students and teachers in primary and secondary schools across Australia and workers in corporate settings, and is now distributed by the Australian Council for Education Research (ACER).

Anthony still engages in a range of sports. He is an avid runner and trains regularly in the pool, at the gym and on the bike.

The Performance Mindset is a summation of his education, passion for learning and experience participating and working in many sports and other fields.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Performance Mindset would never have been written without the encouragement and inspiration of my fantastic support team. I have benefited immeasurably from informal inspiration too, including from people who aren't even aware of the motivation and energy they provided. This extends to the many athletes, coaches, teams and general clients I have worked and been associated with over a career spanning more than 30 years. You are all a big part of this project and I thank you.

Closer to home, I thank my parents for their support, and the ongoing day‐to‐day support of my wife Johanna and our children Alister, Annabelle and Penelope who made this project possible.

Words of encouragement from friends never go astray. They created the energy I needed to start this book and keep going to the finish line. There are too many to mention here, but Philip Whelan and Craig Millar in particular have assisted more than they know. Helen Pitt, Merv Jackson and Greg Murphy have also been a great help and support. Thank you to Phil Whelan and Darren Gray for providing informed feedback on the manuscript, to Jedd Dow for assisting with referencing, and to Darren McMurtrie for working on the statistics and data. It was a team effort. Thank you.

Without a publisher this project would not have eventuated. To Lucy Raymond, Leigh McLennan and the team at John Wiley & Sons, thank you for taking on the project and guiding me through it.

I am exceedingly grateful to the amazing athletes and coaches who willingly gave their time and accepted invitations to be interviewed for the book. Their stories, insights and reflections not only confirmed the importance of a performance mindset, but also provided me with a source of inspiration. I am not sure I have done justice to their stories but I cannot thank them enough. Each of their stories is itself worthy of a book and several have authored or had books written about them. They are:

Youcef Abdi (athletics)

David Andersen (basketball)

Dean Boxall (swimming)

Jacqui Cooper (aerial skiing)

Scott Draper (tennis and golf)

Tayla Harris (Australian rules football)

Mat Hayman (cycling)

Sam Mitchell (Australian rules football)

Brigitte Muir (mountaineering)

Sasa Ognenovski (soccer)

Nicole Pratt (tennis)

Michael Ritter (motorsport)

Storm Sanders (tennis)

Garth Tander (motorsport)

Rohan Taylor (swimming)

Liz Watson (netball)

Jamie Whincup (motorsport)

PREFACE

Australia is a sport‐loving nation. Our opportunities to be actively involved in sport are abundant. Beyond participation, many people follow and support their favourite athletes, teams or sport with great passion. For our nation's size, Olympic and other international sporting performances are impressive, especially considering the range of professional sports codes women and men participate in.

The Performance Mindset evolved from my experience over 30 years of working with many sports and individual athletes in Australia. In that time, interest in the mental space of sport has grown significantly. Antiquated views that saw athletes simply as either ‘weak’ or ‘strong’ have been overtaken by a greater understanding of what is involved in maximising performance. A common perception is that talent and hard work are the only, or at least the key, prerequisites for high performance in sport. There is, however, another vital ingredient — mindset.

From my experience, I know that while talent and hard work are extremely relevant, they are not the foundation of performance. What underpins an athlete's performance is their mindset. As well as contributing to work rate, mindset is the key to unlocking any talent a person may possess.

In this book I explore a range of factors that influence mindset, including:

environmental (socio‐cultural and contextual influences on people, including access to resources, support, opportunities, and the culture of a squad, team, organisation or even a nation)

social (how people interact and deal with their environment, situations and others, as well as how they use resources, including the role of coaches and supports)

personal (how people think, feel and behave).

Naturally, the above overlap and interact. Importantly, I emphasise that mindset skills can be learned. They can be learned in many ways, beginning with a willingness to embrace mindset concepts. This learning is both intuitive and the result of overt focus and coaching. My goal is that performance mindset skills be learned from deliberate engagement in some of the processes I examine in this book.

The introduction puts forward a case for mental skills being the foundation of performance. Each of the seven ‘steps’ that follow explores a specific mindset topic: motivation, resilience, focus, leadership, culture, wellbeing and performance. I believe these topics are central to and contribute fundamentally to a mindset that enables maximum performance.

To gain insight into these important areas, I interviewed a wide range of amazing performers and athletes, as well as outstanding coaches, who willingly shared stories and experiences from their own journeys. Some of these stories are referred to across several chapters; others are presented in stand‐alone features.

To balance these real‐life examples, I have drawn on empirical research from the field of psychology and collected information from publications, documentaries and even social media. Additionally, I have offered some of my own thoughts, models, strategies, program examples, checklists and activities from my work in performance and other fields. At the end of each step I have included a ‘build’ section that lists practical strategies.

Ideas around performance clearly extend beyond sport. I see a performance mindset as applicable to many fields beyond sport and as relevant for anyone interested in improving their performance. Athletes, coaches, parents, teachers or people working in or just interested in sport may enjoy and benefit from the pages ahead. I hope people in other fields interested in performance may also profit from what is presented. While the concepts examined through the book are interrelated, each step may be read as a stand‐alone topic.

One of the fascinating aspects of performance and human behaviour is how powerful the mind is. Also interesting is how individual a path to higher performance can be. This book sets out to inspire and upskill readers to develop their own performance mindset. Whether or not you agree with the ideas and philosophies put forward, I hope you gain some benefit and enjoyment from reading The Performance Mindset.

INTRODUCTIONMADE NOT BORN

Yes, you need a certain level of talent or innate skill, coordination and physical aptitude that are, at least in part, a product of your genetic code to become an athlete, but not as much as you might think. You also need to work relentlessly, investing hours, weeks, months and years, to realise any talent. But mindset is the key that unlocks talent, allowing you to remain engaged and committed to any practice to maximise this talent. Without a finely tuned mindset, the work doesn't happen. It also enables performance when it counts. Mindset is the cornerstone because it both contributes to doing the work and, once the work is done, helps to realise the talent and work. It's also important to understand that a performance mindset can be learned.

Laying a mindset foundation

Many environmental, social and personal factors contribute to mindset. It is about how a person thinks, feels and behaves in a wide range of situations, as well as how environmental and social situations are managed. Mindset also influences behaviour, sustaining motivation and focus, being resilient, decision making in and out of a sport, and managing personal wellbeing and relationships. A performance mindset is about having an attitude and toolkit of mental performance skills to help development and then perform at competitions. These skills are relevant not only in sport, but in spheres such as study, work and other activities. Here I want to explain why mindset is the foundation of performance. The chapters, or steps, that follow discuss how to build your performance mindset.

In most sports, a foundation of skill development, practice and conditioning is best laid in early years, which typically coincide with teenage life and early adulthood. Attitude and mental skills formed at this stage complement physical development and contribute to future performance. Mindset after an initial general technical and physical foundation is laid is vital, yet often overlooked. It helps to sustain motivation, deal with transition phases and capitalise on any initial work done. This is important because in sport, as in many fields in life, there are constant changes and new challenges. Being a high‐performing junior with elite talent is not a ticket to being a successful athlete in an open career. Don't be demoralised if you're not at the top of the ladder when you are 16, 18 or even 20. A commitment to building and sustaining a performance mindset is the biggest contributing factor for further development and performance.

Early success does not guarantee future success

Tennis is a global sport that draws an estimated 60 to 85 million players. There are about 160 000 coaches and almost half a million tennis courts around the world. A wide range of factors other than talent contribute to becoming a top 50 tennis player. For many weeks of the year, junior tournaments brim with young players hoping to forge a career in the big time. Four times a year, 32 of the best juniors qualify to play in the junior Grand Slam tournaments around the world: the Australian Open in Melbourne, the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris, Wimbledon in London or the US Open played at Flushing Meadows in New York.

Reviewing 10 years of junior Grand Slam finalists from 2001 to 2010 is fascinating. The top two from any of these tournaments are rated as among the top junior players in the world at that time. From this achievement and standing, one would expect that on average they would go on to become at least top 50 players in the world at any stage in their career in open tennis. But that's not the case.

Of all the junior male Grand Slam finalists from 2001 to 2010, the average career‐high ranking was 126 (not including two players who did not achieve a ranking inside 1000). Of all the junior female Grand Slam finalists from 2001 to 2010 the average career‐high ranking was 65. This data includes the players who did go on to become world number one. (In my review of the careers of 10 years of junior Grand Slam finalists I have not included 2011 onwards. This was to make data more valid by taking into account that players who played in a junior Grand Slam final after 2010 may have still not reached their peak ranking.) You would imagine that such data would sway the total pool to more players reaching at least a top 50 rank at some stage in their career. But it doesn't — so why not?

Keep in mind that a junior Grand Slam finalist is likely to attract greater support and encouragement from their national tennis federations or sponsors through funding, coaching or other means. This support would likely contribute to an increased opportunity to transition from a top junior to top 50 in an open career.

Naturally the answer to why more junior stars do not progress as high as one would expect is complex, and every sport has its own nuances. Some juniors win based on early physical maturity. In tennis this is negated somewhat by the relative importance of the skill component. Tennis players also travel for many weeks of the year to accumulate points and earn prize money as income. This is often with limited support or financial security, particularly for players outside the top 150 in the world. Injury and access to resources, including coaching, also impact possible progression. And as players transition from junior to open tennis, their competitors tend to be older, physically more developed and more experienced. This indicates that opponents in a one‐on‐one battle could have the advantage of 10 years' training, conditioning, maturity and mental skill development. Athletes in many sports transition from being top of the tree as a junior to a drop in results or selection when they join open ranks. Winning can be tough and they can face stretches with few victories, compared with their junior competition experience. Having been to junior Grand Slams around the world, I can vouch that some seriously good players are reaching finals. With some of the challenges mentioned, however, it is apparent that a performance mindset is necessary to convert a successful junior career to an open one.

It takes a particular mental fortitude to persist with the lifestyle of an athlete and, with the prospect of an insecure future, to chase their goal of becoming a top 50 or top 100 player in the world, let alone reaching the top 10 or number one. Mindset becomes a determining factor to capitalising on the initial foundation laid. Dealing with losing on the open tour, being patient when progress is slow, and sustaining motivation, commitment and work rate are all challenging. And they all involve mindset. I've found this a very common story — and not just in world‐class tennis.

The mindset to keep going

A challenge to developing a high‐performing open athlete is appreciating how individual the journey is. It is not a linear progression. Athletes, like everyone pursuing an endeavour, have different personal characteristics and backgrounds, and come from different geographical regions with varying support bases. Support, opportunities and even luck all play a role in the roller‐coaster path of sporting progression. Recognising and appreciating that each athlete's journey is unique and that there are many paths to achieving goals can aid persistence and development.

Ashleigh Barty, the world number one female tennis player in 2021, is an example of how challenges need to be overcome to keep going in sport. After winning Junior Wimbledon in 2011 and making the finals of open Grand Slam doubles events in 2013, Barty took a break from her sport in 2015. It was a bold move that many athletes would struggle to make. She stopped playing tennis and played cricket. However, after time away and likely with a fresh mindset, she returned to tennis in 2016 aged 20. Even then it wasn't smooth sailing. She lost in the qualifying rounds of Wimbledon in 2016 and in 2017 lost in the first round.

To facilitate Ash's return to tennis from cricket, she moved to a new base in Melbourne and began an individualised program. In her transition, she was supported and coached by the highly regarded Jason Stoltenberg, himself a former Wimbledon men's singles semifinalist. Ash then began working with her current coach, Craig Tyzzer, who was also very experienced. Her new schedule was flexible and her support network were patient and encouraging. The relationship between Craig and Ash went from strength to strength. These factors contributed to her being able to capitalise on her original foundation of work. After three years back on tour she climbed to the top of the sporting mountain and won the French Open in 2019, Wimbledon in 2021 and her home Australian Open in 2022. We'll never know what might have happened had she not taken the break and the path back that she did.

Attitude nurtures talent

Ash's doubles partner at the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games, Storm Sanders, experienced a very different path to realising her goal of representing Australia. Storm was not a junior slam winner. Of the four junior slams she did play, including two in Australia, she had a best result of third round. Due to a limited number of junior tournaments her best junior ranking was 55. Storm grew up about an hour from Perth playing a variety of sports, including soccer, gymnastics and surfing, as well as different sports at school. ‘I never got selected for a state team, as I was only about the fourth or fifth best in Western Australia. I didn't win things or get sponsorship as a junior,’ she reflected when I interviewed her.

‘I honestly don't believe I have that much raw talent,’ Storm said. ‘My talent is to stick to everything I do and commit, day in day out. It ended up helping me because I realised I had to go about it my own way. For three years I set my alarm and regularly got up at 5 am, caught the train an hour into Perth to practise in the morning, then back home to get to school, and repeat in the afternoon. If my parents drove me, it still took 45 minutes each way. I recognise now I was behind in my tennis development, especially because I didn't play as many tournaments as others due to my circumstances. As a result of this I developed more mental skills than my peers at that time. I think it enabled me to have a career and a lot of the other people ahead of me then have now stopped.’

Storm's attitude ultimately assisted her career progression. ‘I remember going for a hit with a junior male player during the Hopman Cup in Perth when I was 15. It was super‐hot, but we kept working through the session. Because of the timing, a few courts down former player and now coach Nicole Pratt was working with Australian player Alicia Molik. She must have noticed us because she came over to speak to me when they finished. She was impressed with how I went about it. There was no coach there. I was running my own session, being independent. She said she was so impressed with my attitude that she would like to help me. I got invited to go to Melbourne for a week to hit and the following year I was invited to an academy there and moved to Melbourne. I had just finished year 11 in Perth, but once in Melbourne I made sure I finished year 12.’

The transition wasn't smooth. After several challenges, including injuries that forced her out of the game for almost a year, and with no ranking in 2018, Storm is now ranked about 120 in the world in singles and 30 in doubles. She has built her game back on the foundation of doubles and in 2021 made the Wimbledon doubles semifinal and US Open doubles quarter‐finals, and represented Australia at the Olympics and the Federation Cup (now the Billie Jean King Cup). She began competing in singles again in 2020, effectively starting her singles career in her mid‐twenties. It's a career that wasn't built on talent, but on mindset. Ash Barty's and Storm Sanders’ stories also reflect the variety of pathways that a sporting career can take. They can be unpredictable, with twists and turns and different talent bases. Using supports, patience and a determined resolve were key mindsets for both athletes that enabled them to advance.

You grow in the direction of your focus

Take another example, this time from a team sport. Sam Mitchell is a retired Australian rules football player who was appointed coach for 2022 of the team he'd had most success with — the Hawthorn Football Club. Hawthorn played in four consecutive Australian Football League (AFL) Grand Finals, winning three in a row from 2013 to 2015. This feat deserves special recognition due to the equalisation policies of player and staff salary caps and drafting policy that the AFL introduced in the late eighties. Since equalisation, 14 teams have won premierships while only two have won three consecutively, which makes the Hawks' achievement even more impressive.

In this winning team, Sam won the AFL Brownlow Medal in 2012. The Brownlow is arguably the game's most prestigious individual honour. It is awarded to the ‘best and fairest’ player in the entire competition in any given season. By the time he retired in 2017, Sam was the third highest total vote scorer in the history of the medal. He had won four premierships, played the third most games in Hawthorn's history and won five club champion awards. In addition, Sam captained the club from 2008 to 2010, with ’08 yielding a premiership.

What's interesting is that Sam was overlooked altogether in the 2000 draft, then was selected in 2001 with draft pick 36. So, in the year of his draft, he was overlooked by every club in the AFL before he was selected in the third round with Hawthorn's fifth pick.

One strength Sam had was his capacity to kick with either left or right foot. He wasn't especially tall or quick. His endurance wasn't necessarily the greatest either. But he had a reputation for his skill and decision making. His proficiency on both sides of his body was so evident that commentators often remarked on the difficulty of distinguishing which his ‘natural’ side was. When I interviewed him late in 2021, Sam said, ‘We had no sporting background in our family at all. Dad actually bought some books about football to learn the game. When I was quite young, Dad had a person working with him, Bill, who had some experience and skill in football, and he said it would be good to alternate one left‐foot kick and one right‐foot kick when I went for a kick.’ Sam took it as gospel. He adopted the principle, and it stuck. ‘I still find it natural to alternate left–right and it actually felt weird right through my career if I had a few kicks on one side of my body before using the other side. It was a learned skill.’ Bill's unsolicited advice many years before Sam was drafted helped make him the champion footballer he became. It was a spark that developed one of his key football skills. And his commitment to practice developed this weapon for him.

Regarding talent, Sam said, ‘Some genetic factors help, but I think the ratio of importance of talent to development is about 10:90. Skill development hasn't got a lot to do with talent. I believe that if you have long‐term commitment, focus and desire, year after year, your development will be strong. Sometimes starting with a lot of talent doesn't help because you become reliant on current skills and don't have to work as hard. You grow in the direction of your focus.’

Is talent overrated?

One interesting insight that arises from Sam's experience is how difficult it is to identify talent or how perceived talent, even at 18, may or may not be realised. Considering the resources, including the experience and expertise of recruiting teams in many sports, identifying future performers remains a challenge. Recruiters and talent scouts need to consider how a future athlete will approach their career once they are drafted as much as or even more than what they have already delivered. Attitude and mindset will determine whether any talent is fully realised and whether they are able to continue to develop.

If we investigate one angle reflecting the challenges, let's look more closely at the Brownlow Medal. Taking into account 19 Brownlows between 1996 and 2021, the average draft selection for the winner was pick 26. (To determine this average, I excluded father/son and zone draft selections as these factors influence where they were selected. Prior to 1996 the draft was not as relevant as today, and players were recruited through zones and other avenues.)

I know some will regard pick 26 as a reasonably high selection. Many diverse factors can also contribute to a prospective winner's chances, such as injury or availability to play, or the team they were selected to and teammates who might draw votes away. It is evident, however, that some of the highest awarded players in the history of the AFL were not recognised at that level at the time of being drafted. Athletes such as Sam Mitchell made themselves into the players they became — through mindset.

That mindset contributed to Sam's left foot–right foot regime, which was one reflection of his determination to achieve his goal of becoming an AFL player. It is even arguable that considering the players who have won the Brownlow as a top 10 draft selection, the feat was achieved on the back of mindset, which enabled them to capitalise on their talent after they were drafted, rather than depending on talent alone. The average number of years that this group had been playing when they won the award is just over seven. This indicates that the length of time to learn and grow is likely a better predictor of a Brownlow winner than draft selection.

Ash, Storm, Sam and the other athletes featured in this book drew on a wide and varied talent base. Even for talented athletes, the path is not straightforward. A forward trajectory is governed by mindset, which in turn contributes to a capacity to learn and grow, as well as do the work required.

Interesting reading on the topic of talent includes The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle, The Sports Gene by David Epstein and Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin.

Assessing mindset variables

An oft‐cited story, due to his stellar career in the American National Football League (NFL), is that of Tom Brady. Brady was drafted at pick 199 in 2000. At the time of writing, he had won more championships as a player than some NFL clubs have won in their entire history. What is less well known about his story is the investment he made as a junior in a football coach with a wealth of experience, Tom Martinez. In his book The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle describes how Brady carries in his wallet a list of technique tips learned from the veteran coach and that he has an ongoing relationship with his long‐time mentor.1 In the Brady 6 documentary, former NFL head coach Steve Mariucci comments on Brady being overlooked by clubs and his low draft pick: ‘We didn't open up his chest and look at his heart … and resiliency, and all the things that are making him great now.’2

While not identified at his draft as the player he would become, Brady had already invested in a range of ways other than his physical development while a junior that paid him back. Recognising this, Ian O'Connor, reporting for ESPN.com in 2016, wrote an article headlined: ‘Tom Brady's greatest talent is his desire to be great.’3 It's clear that more than talent contributed to his accomplishments.

I have had an insider's view of the AFL draft process, as well as selections of athletes in other sports. Over some 20 years I have been contracted by different AFL clubs and sports to participate in the interview process that supports coaches and recruiters in the selection of athletes. Over that time I have seen the emphasis on personal attributes and qualities grow significantly. Areas that recruiters now consider more than they used to include (in no particular order):

capacity to learn and grow

determination and drive

independence

capacity as a team member

competitive spirit

cultural fit

general game‐day mental skills

resilience

wellbeing

decision making on and off the field

training attitude and commitment

coachability.

The growth in consideration of psychological variables in athlete selection processes reflects the increased recognition of the importance of mindset. This consideration also helps support the wellbeing and development of players once selected. In sports, there is more awareness of the support a player may need before they begin. In the recruiting process, references from junior coaches and key support staff are checked. Of course, physical data and testing, injury history, specific sporting IQ, how they play the game and vital information on sport performance history are important and meticulously scrutinised. However, a multitude of other factors have been increasingly recognised as important when assessing whether a player will be able to utilise, and grow from, any talent shown.

One challenge in the selection process of any athlete in any sport is that while physical prowess can easily be tested and compared (it's simple to test how fast an athlete can run or how high they can jump), psychological variables are much harder to determine and rank. They are not as visible, they vary significantly and they are impacted by many factors, which makes mindset much more difficult to identify, compare and project. That many athletes are selected while still developing physically and emotionally adds further complexity. A person at 16 or 18 is often very different from the person they become in their late twenties.

Through the process of considering mindset variables, it is apparent that observed talent is only one variable in future performance. That's why Sam Mitchell and Tom Brady slipped through the top order of the draft net, only for time to reveal their true ability. If they had not been selected at those late picks, their sporting talent might not have been realised. I wonder what they would be doing now if they had been overlooked in their respective drafts.

On this topic, Alex Hutchinson, author of Endure: mind, body and the curiously elastic limits of human performance,4 observes that ‘even relying on the best science available, you're inevitably going to pick duds — and perhaps more significantly, miss some athletes with potential to develop into world beaters'.5

Research insights

A 2004 study examined ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ influences on sport expertise:

Primary influences include genetics, training and psychological factors.

Secondary influences include socio‐cultural and contextual elements.

6

Research insights

Research suggests that coaches and sport psychology staff working with younger athletes should consider targeting specific mindset skill development including personal wellbeing and self‐reliance to enhance sport development in juniors. Skills required to assist young athletes transition from youth squads to elite performers in rugby include:

enjoyment

responsibility

adaptability

squad spirit

being a self‐aware learner.

7

Enjoyment matters

Consider what keeps a person highly engaged long enough to maximise the foundation of physical conditioning and skill they have laid in their sport. You cannot become an athlete without dedicated hours of purposeful training and time‐on‐task. If an athlete over time is not enjoying what they are doing, it is unlikely they will train often and hard enough, or with enough engagement and intent, to realise their talent. This applies to all ages but is particularly relevant for younger athletes during their development or transition years from junior to open sport. There are many competing interests for young people so enjoying what they do from an early age is paramount. It is also relevant to more mature athletes, because the level of competition in most arenas is competitive enough that once practice, attitude or mindset slides, performance will give, regardless of talent, even for experienced performers.

In Search of Greatness, an insightful sports documentary by Gabe Polsky released in 2018, features a host of sporting legends including basketballer Michael Jordan, Brazilian soccer star Pelé, Canadian NHL ice‐hockey star Wayne Gretzky, tennis player Serena Williams and San Francisco 49ers NFL player Jerry Rice, often cited as the best wide receiver there ever was. Interviews with each of the athletes provide telling insights into their development and performance.8

Rice insists he didn't feel he had any genetic advantage and was not the most talented receiver, size‐ or speed‐wise, but ‘I knew I had football speed’. His mother wasn't a fan of the game, thinking it too rough. Acknowledging his challenges, however, he explained that ‘what enabled [my] performance was that I worked on certain qualities that I was lacking to make up for my deficiencies’.

Gretsky also recognised early that ‘speed and power was not going to get me to the next level. My wisdom and vision on the ice [got me to the next level]’. Such was his enjoyment of the game of ice‐hockey that from an early age, as he watched games, he would trace the line of the puck on a sketch he had made of the ice‐rink. He also practised regularly on his own. ‘No‐one told me to do it,’ he added.

For both Rice and Gretsky, enjoyment of their sport was integral to their development. This enjoyment drove them to practise alone or play active unstructured games with friends, related or unrelated to their sport. It also developed creativity in how they saw the game and contributed to feeding a strong intrinsic passion to improve.

I have found this passion in many athletes I have worked with over the years. The reasons for their enjoyment varies, from being outdoors to expressing themselves physically, being in a team environment, trying to master a skill or trying to achieve something. A key, consistent factor is that enjoyment is in some way related to their chosen sport, which drives their engagement and time‐on‐task. For this reason, I ask athletes I work with to identify and list what they enjoy and to regularly revisit and update their notes.

How much practice?

Over the past decade much has been written about the ‘10 000 hours rule’, which posits that 10 000 hours of practice is required to become expert in any field, such as sport, music, medical practice or teaching. The notion that 10 000 hours of practice will guarantee expertise was popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his 2011 book Outliers.9 Although this ‘rule’ is often cited, it is an oversimplification that has been taken far too literally. Early discussion on 10 000 hours of practice was generated by Anders Ericsson and colleagues when reviewing contributing factors to musical expertise.10 They found that by the age of 20 ‘expert’ pianists had accumulated approximately 10 000 hours of practice, compared with a total of about 2000 hours for amateur pianists.

In Ericsson's 2016 book Peak: secrets from the new science of expertise (co‐authored by Robert Pool), he observes that ‘unfortunately, the 10 000 rule — which is the only thing that many people today know about the effects of practice — is wrong in several ways’.11 Among the reasons he identifies are that the amount of practice to become expert ‘varies from field to field’ and that ‘not every type of practice leads to improved ability’. He also says that ‘anyone can improve, but it requires the right approach’.

In sport, the reality is that 10 000 hours of dedicated, deliberate practice is unlikely to be accumulated by late teenage years or age 20. Research also confirms that in many sports athletes achieve national representation or professional contracts with less than 10 000 hours of dedicated practice. Even for those with high volumes of practice, it is not the differentiating factor. Mindset will contribute to practice and make best use of the time invested.

Transferring accumulated hours of training into competition environments is something I have seen many athletes struggle with. Large volumes of training can also lead to mental fatigue and burnout, creating additional pressure that negatively impacts both people and performance. One of the more common referrals to performance psychology practices is to help athletes replicate training levels in competition. Mindset is the bridge linking training and performance.

Research insights

A meta‐analysis of a large number of studies concluded that deliberate practice accounted for about 18 per cent of sport performance overall. In elite‐level performers, deliberate practice accounted for only 1 per cent of variance in performance. Performers who reached a high level of skill did not tend to start their sport earlier than lower skill athletes.

In addition to deliberate practice, the study noted that other experiences may contribute to individual differences in performance. These include competition experience, play activities and possible participation in multiple sports during certain stages of development. Later specialisation may also reduce the incidence of injuries and psychological burnout. Specific psychological variables that could account for performance differences beyond deliberate practice include attention control, confidence, propensity to experience performance anxiety and aversion to negative outcomes.12

Many different paths

It is evident, then, that there are many different paths to becoming an elite athlete. An important 2016 paper suggested that in contrast to Ericsson's deliberate practice framework, in which linear sporting progression through time spent in practice is inferred, successful athletes follow complex, non‐linear, individualised routes to the top of their sport.13 They must adapt to anticipated and unanticipated developmental opportunities, setbacks and a range of transitions as they progress. The authors also noted that athletes who achieve a high level are differentiated by positive, proactive coping and a learning approach to challenges.

As alluded to, I have witnessed many individual paths to competitive arenas. I've worked with athletes who were early starters and progressed through the ranks, those who have had interruptions and late starters. What has enabled them to achieve their sporting goals has been a commitment driven by passion, outstanding support and an investment in mindset to deal with and learn from the challenges experienced on their journey. These are some of the factors that have enabled continued progression towards goals.

Matthew Syed, in his book Bounce: the myth of talent and the power of practice, emphasises how the power of practice, environment and mindset helped him become a British table tennis champion and Olympian.14 He recounts that a combination of circumstances contributed to his laying a foundation of many hours of playing table tennis, but that mindset was a key ingredient to his progression. He also admits that he had powerful advantages not available to hundreds of thousands of other youngsters. ‘What is certain,’ he writes, ‘is that if a big enough group of youngsters had been given a table at eight years of age, had a brilliant older brother to practice with, had been trained by one of the best coaches in the country (who coached nearby), had joined the only 24 hours club in the country, and practiced for thousands of hours by their early teens, I would not have been number one in England.’

When Matthew was 19, one of the greatest players in table tennis history, Chen Xinhua, from China, moved to England and became his coach. Matthew's new practice regime bore no relation to what he had seen or experienced previously, or even imagined. This ‘quirk of fate’, as he describes it, contributed to his ongoing development and fuelled his passion to strive harder.

Sometimes luck plays a role in sporting success. Meeting the right person at the right time may be all that is needed. Not working with a particular coach can be attributed to bad luck as much as bad choices. Working with a coach who has faith and is supportive can be due to luck or choice. It's a fine line between the two. Picking up an injury that limits opportunity can be just bad luck rather than bad management. A talent scout watching a game or event that happens to produce a standout performance is the kind of good luck that can go a long way to launching a sporting career.

These studies and stories emphasise that there is no single path to development. Playing a variety of sports at an early age to build engagement and enjoyment, maximising motivation and early development of mindset, is likely more important than is typically appreciated.

Patience and persistence

Aerial skiing is a complex sport. It is also one of the more challenging sports for Australians to excel in, given how much the climate limits opportunities for time‐on‐task in the snow (although water jumps play a big part in specific aerial training). Our geography likely contributes more to our international performance in swimming than in skiing, compared with, say, Switzerland, where the conditions are reversed. It's not about talent, but opportunity. In addition, minimal attention and few role models in the sport limits potential extrinsic motivation to become involved or excel in winter sports compared with other sports. So for Jacqui Cooper to become one of Australia's greatest Olympians and the first Australian woman to make five Olympic Games was a feat par excellence.

When I spoke to Jacqui about her journey she told me, ‘If you had to rate my talent it would have been zero out of 100. And that wasn't just my opinion — the coaches and administrators agreed!’ Such was her reputation that, in 1999, after being freshly crowned world champion and world number one, she was asked by a coach to speak to a group of young female athletes and give them some inspiration. Upon introduction, one of the girls in the group politely enquired if she could ask a question. ‘Sure,’ Jacqui replied, thinking it would be about one of her achievements. Rather, the query was ‘Are you the acrobatic moron?’ The junior was Lydia Lassila, who became a training partner and teammate and progressed to win gold ahead of Jacqui 11 years later at the 2010 Winter Olympics. ‘We still laugh about it today,’ Jacqui said.

‘You can have talented people, but in my sport, if they don't have a capacity to take some risk, they won't achieve,’ she explained. ‘I was a risk taker. I also loved acrobatics. And I did work hard.’ Growing up, she recalls, she had no training as a gymnast and didn't focus on any specific sport. She tried different things but wasn't necessarily good at anything. ‘Mum and Dad were busy, with me being a triplet, so weekend sport didn't happen much. We didn't even have a trampoline. What I did have was lots of energy — Dad used to call me an energy ball — and whenever I could I would go to a friend's house or the trampoline centre to play,’ she said.

Then, in 1989, Jacqui met Geoff Lipshut, the current CEO of the Australian Winter Institute and the chef de mission for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. ‘He's a blend of Mr Myagi from The Karate Kid and Yoda from Star Wars,’ Jacqui recalled. ‘He literally saw me jumping on a trampoline that was next to the road when he was driving past. He was in the area to visit another athlete. The next day he met my parents, and that started my journey in aerial skiing. I was 16 years old. He put forward a 10‐year plan, and 10 years later he was there when the plan was achieved.’

Lipshut also nurtured the development and careers of Kristie Marshall, Alisa Camplin and Lydia Lassila, who all competed for Australia. Lassila was in a transition program for people leaving gymnastics who might be interested in aerial skiing. He happened to be at the Royal Melbourne Show one day and saw Alisa Camplin playing on a trampoline. Again he asked her parents if she might be interested in aerial skiing. Camplin went on to win an Olympic gold ahead of Jacqui at the 2006 Winter Olympics. If not for those lucky encounters, I wonder if Jacqui or Alisa would have gone on to become the athletes they did.

‘I was able to do only about 40 hours per year at the snow, so the first two years were slow growth with skiing. I got encouragement from others to keep going. I didn't back myself at all. What I did have was a place to direct my energy. It took me five years before I could land a jump.’ After she left school, Jacqui went to Colorado to pursue her development. ‘At the start I couldn't keep up with any of the athletes, so I skied with holiday makers and was even getting tips from them.’

Each of these aerial skiers followed a unique path that wasn't based solely on physical talent. They started out with a degree of talent and different experiences, but mindset enabled their persistence. Jacqui broke no junior records and was not a high achiever in any sport. She played multiple sports as a junior, but drew on an intrinsic passion, patience and energy, as well as the support and encouragement of others.

Early bolters and late bloomers

One of the many sports I have worked in over the years is swimming. Swimming clubs and squads include a wide mix of athletes with diverse motivations, from general fitness to social connections and Olympic aspirations. During adolescence, when many of their peers enjoy sleeping in, swimming squads begin training before school when it's still dark. After school, it's often back to the pool.