by Ben Osborne
One of the most difficult things I have had to do throughout my volleyball career so far has been developing and controlling my mindset on court. That’s crazy, right?
Sometimes as an athlete it’s possible to experience the feeling of not being able to control your own mindset. When the going gets tough you might start to believe that everything is acting against you, even your own consciousness! It’s the classic ‘self-doubt’ phenomenon: maybe you’ve just shanked the ball 10 metres up the wall and now the same player who just forced your error is going back to the service line. I’ll give this some context and maybe make the situation even more vivid: let’s say the score is 23-21 to the opposing team – what now? You’ve made one error on serve receive, what are you doing now in this short space of time to prepare for the next action and the next chance to close the gap on the scoreboard? I want you to imagine yourself in this situation, what would you be thinking?
This is a situation that I have experienced many times over the past few years. The problem can arise in pressure situations that players face during a match. I have found that these setbacks are something that I need to deal with straight away so that they don’t start to affect my next action. In the example above, the one serve receive error must not be allowed to dictate the athlete’s approach to the next couple of points. If they allow their focus to dwell on the error, how does it affect their next action? In my personal experience, I would answer that the actual act of shanking the pass will be replaying over and over in my head. Having those scenes replaying in your head leads to feelings of frustration and possibly embarrassment. Of course, these are negative thoughts that are not going to benefit any athlete’s performance in any way and might even cost them the next few points as well! Therefore, it’s important to try and release these thoughts as quickly as possible and focus on the next task in hand.
So let’s look at a few techniques you may want to try yourself in the future to deal with a setback in a match (I would love to take credit for these ideas but these are a few I’ve learnt along my journey):
- The Screenshot
Firstly, the mental image of the mistake you’ve just made is in your head. It’s natural. I want you to imagine you’ve just taken a screenshot of that scene and printed it onto a piece of paper. In order to release this image and all its accompanying thoughts, you want to scrunch this image into a ball so the scene is gone: all that remains is a scrunched paper ball. To add to the satisfaction and your ability to move forward, imagine you are throwing the paper ball into a bin where it’ll stay forever. Now you can move on from the mistake and focus on your next action leaving the mistake scrunched up in the rubbish bin.
- Self-Assessment
This approach is a little more practical and perhaps something a lot of players already incorporate without realising. As soon as you’ve made the mistake I want you to replay it in your head but this time refer to a similar situation where you executed the skill correctly and confidently. Perhaps you’ve hit the ball into the net; imagine yourself going up to hit the ball again but this time think about what you previously changed to make the action successful and realise that you have the ability to execute the skill in the future! For example, this could be ‘reach the ball higher’ or ‘use my guiding arm more’. Just don’t get too focused on the small details, have trust in your abilities!
- Favourite character voice
I find this diffusion technique to be particularly useful with younger players but it is more than suitable for players of any age. After you’ve made a mistake I want you to imagine your favourite character from any fictional story – it could even be a famous person that you idolise. Let’s pick Dwayne Johnson, probably someone you would think of as both mentally and physically strong. I want you to imagine him speaking to you and telling you motivational phrases like “keep your head up”; you can even give it a comedic twist by using a humorous character like Basil Brush and having them say something to make you laugh and forget about the mistake. It can be whatever comforts you best and helps you to regain focus and leave the past in the past.
The 3 techniques above are just a small sample of many that I have heard about so far on my volleyball journey. Players have fed back to me that these techniques were helpful in being able to move on to the next point rather than going into a cycle of self-doubt. The important aspect of dealing with setbacks is accepting the mistake has happened and not only seeing it as a negative incident. Every player is going to make thousands of errors in their career, that isn’t the problem. The problem arises when those errors affect that player’s mindset and cause them to make further errors.
I’ll leave you with one final quote to round off that last point and it comes from Michael Jordan who says:
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Like Michael Jordan, we can succeed, we just need to learn not to dwell on the past!
VolleyPoole 