Category: Coaching

Mental Health

What are you in the Game for?

Dr. John Panepinto

(About a 3-minute read)

Hopefully in the very near future, we will step back and look at the fundamental reasons why so many of our youths are struggling. Often, we don’t look far enough downstream or deep enough below the surface. In my mind, two major trends have been building momentum for years (decades!). So much so we’ve come to the dangerous point of acceptance: “That’s how we do it here. That’s how we’ve always done it.”

The first trend is the professionalization of youth sports. The concept instills a sense of urgency to abandon the developmental tasks of childhood and adolescence for the implicit or explicit possibility of making a living playing sports. This is dangerous on so many levels, but I’ll just offer a few.

Rigid schedules and training rob children of the diversity of experiences required to master emotions, executive functioning, and problem-solving. These experiences are processes and require lots of practice in unstructured settings (not micro-managed by adult directives)—not in the least playing, creating, and exploring with other kids.

Adults tend to view through the lens of products. Adults are goal-oriented in a different way than kids and force this thinking on minds not ready to accommodate the structure. The result (no pun intended) is youths who only see the trophy, the scholarship, the fame, or the paycheck (or consumer products in myriad forms). This is the perfect playbook for a rise in anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. A perfect playbook for an empty core where what is most precious should reside. Instead…I am nothing without the result. It’s not a loss, I am a loser.

The second trend is the abuse of power. Favoritism, nepotism, and random doses of reward and punishment are signals of supposed leaders who have not figured out or do not care what happens as a result of their actions. The ego is a trickster and can rationalize just about anything. Whether it’s making empty promises to kids or outright lies to powerless parents. Or parents playing the same misinformed game with their kids. Or adults living their unfulfilled dreams in borrowed flesh.

The data continuously reveals that a small percentage of young athletes reach the pinnacle. The numbers also reveal that youths quit organized sports in adolescence—most of the time very early in this stage. What the numbers don’t reveal is the sense of self (taking form at this stage) for either group. How has the experience changed them? What do they think about themselves? Others? Life?

Once, a father told me that a tennis coach barked at a group of seven and eight-year-olds, “I’m here to train college tennis players.” This dad found another place to play. Most likely, no one in the group will fulfill that coach’s dream. And, at that age, college is just a word on a hoodie.

Fun has gotten a bad rap in a results-driven world. But fun is a secondary feeling elicited by the primary emotional systems of seeking and play. We were born to explore and play reciprocally and creatively, and both lead us to become more fully human in all developmental domains. Fun is not trivial. Its absence for kids is no small thing. Fun is the root of freedom, the first scent of interests and abilities—something we value as adults.

It’s an honor to coach. Once you’ve been a parent, you sense that you are always coaching someone’s son or someone’s daughter. As a coach you’ve been given power and the freedom to choose. The choice is not trivial. The first principle is always, “Do no harm.” But you have to know what kids need to obey the principle.

image credit: Ken Treloar, unsplash.com

Performance psychology

The Fundamental Habit

Dr. John Panepinto

One habit stands above all others—or should I say below. It provides the foundation for meeting the moment and applies to all roles and situations. In one of the most important books ever written, Man’s Search for Meaning, holocaust survivor Dr. Viktor Frankl, offered that our greatest freedom is our power to choose our attitude.

In this sense, attitude is not referring to the popular use of the word (“You have a bad attitude”). It’s not a descriptor. Attitude is the direction we are pointed in, meaning we intentionally choose our movement into future. We have no control of the great complexity we meet in the world—except how we choose to act. 

The space between what we perceive and how we respond is the essence of a human being becoming. The habit of entering that space is the greatest of all. Disciplines that teach us to rein in the wild horses of the mind begin with this intention. To honor this space. 

The ways to reach this space are few and the obstacles are many. In a world that reflexively searches for answers with deft thumbs misses something critical…  The search for meaning does not have an algorithm. Reflection and contemplation happen in silence, stillness, and solitude.

Those three “S” words make many shudder.

In the role of athlete, coach, or parent, the space for our greatest habit can grow giving more perspective and more room for developing knowledge and skills. If this space doesn’t grow, we repeat the past. Or we act out scripts without our names in the byline.

And that makes me shudder.

(This post originally appeared in A Father’s Path and was edited to suit for athletes and coaches)

images credit: J. Plenio (J Plenio Photography) and Daniel Gonzalez (unsplash)

Performance psychology, Sports Psychology

Complexity

Dr. John Panepinto

(estimated 2-3 minute read time)

One of the many questions I ask clients may sound borrowed from a job interview: “What do you see in five years…?” But really, it’s a question of an internal–view. The answers range from rich to vague and confused. And that question helps frame the next one: “When you look back on your life over the past five years…?

The day-to-day and the year-to-year can have the flavor of familiarity. Patterns abound. But there’s a process below the surface that speaks to the complexity of life. As you move forward with an aim, you are steeped in complexity beyond imagination. The further out or bigger the goal, the more complexity factors in.

What that translates to is people, things, obstacles, and events that are not in your present experience. If you look back five years, chances are high (regardless of whether you set an ambitious goal or not) that there are people that are in or out of your life, and events and problems that occurred that you didn’t foresee.  

This is one of the understated reasons why individuals don’t set goals or don’t set them too far out. The complexity can be overwhelming. And the courage and imagination to set the vision high can be daunting. Security, safety, and the known will always whisper in your ear to stay put. But this process of imagining a future self is the way that we develop the inner qualities to rise to the goal or vision.

Setting long-term major goals and creating a vision of your future self is the essence of evolution. If you consider who you would be if you became this future self, you have tapped into a deeper process of self-realization. Then the key is to hold this vision both loosely and in the present. Loosely because complexity will emerge with your first step forward. Think of your vision as a point on the horizon. You see the point in the distance within the enormity of the whole perspective, but details are vague.

And holding this vision “in the present” provides an internal compass regardless of the complexity of the situation. Responding and adapting to complexity (demanding, growing), and holding your vision (devotion) in the present will inform your smallest goals, decisions, and the way you problem-solve through obstacles.

photo credit: Tim Johnson (unsplash)

Performance psychology, Sports Psychology

Scattered

Dr. John Panepinto

It can be argued that the most important quality for performance is the fidelity of attention. Attention connects focus to motivation, all our mental models of performance, and goals. It’s the process of attending that taps into intention, learning, informing, decision-making, and growth.

Try this experiment. Take a ball and toss it in the shape of an arc above eye level and completely across your body to the other hand. When you get a rhythm, add another ball, tossing the second one higher or lower than the first. Now add a third.

There’s a reason it’s called “juggling.” The inexperienced juggler is trying to meld multiple tasks—one ball and one toss at a time. The experienced juggler is aware of the three balls in space and focused on the process as a one activity. If one of the balls goes offline, his hand “finds” the ball. The juggler has a sense of space and rhythm that makes the movement experience whole.

Likewise, the dancer is aware of the dance yet not the mechanics which have been internalized in rehearsal. There’s a sense of quality held together as a whole by rhythm. And the chess master sees patterns, not one move at a time, and sees checkmate well before the moves are made.

These skills and aptitudes are trained, honed with the highest quality of attention.

Training attention is a process. And multi-tasking is not a thing. Doing unrelated tasks, or marginally related tasks at the same time simply means you are shifting attention in time, focused on a single task at one time. Then shifting to the next task. It’s linear and not effective. And it scatters attention.

Try videoing the experience of multi-tasking. You will notice things you do not notice in real time. Stops and starts. Hesitation and noticeable pauses. Changes in rhythm and breathing. Like the first time you tried rubbing your belly and patting your head.

We live in a world that has compressed the time envelop. We want things now. Waiting doesn’t seem optional. And the competition for your attention increases noticeably—in shorter time frames. And sometimes without you noticing.

If you’re scattered when you are not competing, practicing, or performing, there’s a good chance the quality of your attention is less than in the important time frames of executing. Chances are you spend most or a good portion of your day not training, learning, practicing, or competing in your sport. But you are always attending. Because attending is a process and how well you attend is a quality.

Natural processes require fidelity. Fundamentals work this way. Try scattering your sleep, your eating, your relationships, your learning, or your trust…

It doesn’t work. The quality suffers as does the process (and, therefore, outcomes).

Intention informs attention. While each day has a rhythm and a structure that includes the highest priority activities, don’t underestimate the power of “paying” attention during the “in-betweens” or activities of seemingly low importance. Do what you are doing. And be present. And limit activities that scatter attention.

Over time you will notice a difference in attention in everything you do.

Photo credit: Oliver Hihn (unsplash.com)

Sports Psychology

Coaching Young Children

Dr. John Panepinto

Recently I started coaching a middle-schooler who was new to the game of tennis. I did my usual assessment of skills and was pleasantly surprised given his lack of on-court experience. He’d taken a few lessons at another club and about halfway into the lesson he started sharing some of the negativity that came his way during that time. These were global comments on his ability based on what seemed to be a small sample size.

Criticizing other coaches is not helpful. But this boy was simply doing something very human—dealing with the confusion of experiences. In this case, his venting helped clear the space for a fresh start which is important to the learning process. You can’t have two competing self-concepts (“I am not very good” and “I am learning and improving”) in mind and expect to be present.

I have enjoyed coaching him and, interestingly, what started as a “just a couple of lessons” turned into a “We’d like to continue.” I offer this piece of information because it speaks to his parent’s tentativeness based on the previous experience. No different than any other relationship. I don’t think I’ve ever answered more questions prior to a first lesson. It felt like an interview for a defense department security clearance. And for good reason!

Because everyone is someone’s son or daughter.

And making that connection helps you to make some space between your plan, your needs, and to see that you are responsible for someone’s child.

kelly-sikkema-WRByZhruW6o-unsplash girl with racket

Notice that the title of this piece is “Coaching Young Children” and when we use this term we often think of little ones— four, five, six, seven-year-olds… But the point is we all share the same emotions and express the same feelings. They are child-like and nearly entirely nonverbal. Sure, the expressions may seem more mature as we age, and the context may be more complex. But there is a good reason why the emotional areas of the brain develop first and before we can even use words. Because it all comes down to meaning, something we feel and something very hard to explain. Every experience has meaning even if we deem it to be meaningless.

Coaching a young child, a middle-schooler or an adult may look different on the surface, but at the core it’s pretty much the same. It’s an experience based on understanding and connection. You can’t learn, grow or develop without meaning. In other words, changing anything whether it is wiring muscle memory or rewiring the idea you have of your potential as a tennis player, is expensive. It’s costly in terms of effort and time, and it’s fueled by motivation—the core of which is emotion in motion. Notice that motivation, emotion, motion, and motive all share the same root. The source is the same and nothing happens unless emotion fuels the process. We like to think that logic dictates. But the hard challenges we take on don’t often make sense from the outside. And it’s because the motivation will always be a unique fire and a singular experience for the individual.

 

If you would like more structure to take your mental approach to the next level, consider picking up a copy of my new sports psychology workbook: Above the Field of Play. Or to learn about other sports psychology services pricing (including an assessment of your present mental approach), visit my website at DrJohnPanepinto.com.

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photo credits: Kelly Sikkema (unspash.com)