J
Johnny King is God
Guest
Not very often we get into sports psychology on these forums, but something has been bothering me and I need to get it off my chest.
First of all I want to say well done to Tranmere for the great result last night, its amazing what a bit of positivity can do. And that is kind of what I want to talk about.
Some of the most successful sportsmen in the country practise for games using psychology as a tool in their success. In a nut shell this is taking kicks and imagining yourself being succesful. The two best examples are David Beckham and in rugby Jonny Wilkinson, both of whom are renowned for being hard trainers with lots of dedication. When they are practising they have there own methods of focussing their concentration. What they both do though is constantly imagine themselves succeeeding with their kicks under all possible circumstances...i.e. with the crowd jeering, cheering, silent, noisy, in the rain in the wind. By programming their brains to deal with all of these situations and practicing and practicing the brain programmes itself to deal with the real situations they find themselves in. As a result they are able to deal with situations and succeed.
If this is the case then one must assume the opposite is true...if they imagine themselves failing in all circumstances they will invariably fail in the real situation.
So whats this got to do with Tranmere. Well. the comment which has peed me off the most from Brian Little in recent weeks is the 'We are not going to wipe the floor with teams comments'. I would suggest that if we perhaps had a little more belief in ourselves then we would perhaps be a lot more positive in the way we play. What I have seen, heard and read of games this season we have been particularly negative in situations where perhaps we should not be. Interesting to see that when we made a positive change and reshuffled last night - we trounced them. Maybe if we went into games reinforcing the fact that we can and should wipe the floor with teams then from time to time we will.
My suggestion to Brian for the new year would be to lose the negative attitude - lets be positive and think positive. We are better than a lot of teams in this division when we play the way we can play - and not the way we think we need to to grind a result which result in negative performances and invariably negative results.
For anyone who hasnt fallen asleep yet, you might find this article interesting on Jonny Wilkinsons kicking psychology. Interesting stuff, and maybe some stuff we can learn from it.
http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/articles/scni14a7.htm
First of all I want to say well done to Tranmere for the great result last night, its amazing what a bit of positivity can do. And that is kind of what I want to talk about.
Some of the most successful sportsmen in the country practise for games using psychology as a tool in their success. In a nut shell this is taking kicks and imagining yourself being succesful. The two best examples are David Beckham and in rugby Jonny Wilkinson, both of whom are renowned for being hard trainers with lots of dedication. When they are practising they have there own methods of focussing their concentration. What they both do though is constantly imagine themselves succeeeding with their kicks under all possible circumstances...i.e. with the crowd jeering, cheering, silent, noisy, in the rain in the wind. By programming their brains to deal with all of these situations and practicing and practicing the brain programmes itself to deal with the real situations they find themselves in. As a result they are able to deal with situations and succeed.
If this is the case then one must assume the opposite is true...if they imagine themselves failing in all circumstances they will invariably fail in the real situation.
So whats this got to do with Tranmere. Well. the comment which has peed me off the most from Brian Little in recent weeks is the 'We are not going to wipe the floor with teams comments'. I would suggest that if we perhaps had a little more belief in ourselves then we would perhaps be a lot more positive in the way we play. What I have seen, heard and read of games this season we have been particularly negative in situations where perhaps we should not be. Interesting to see that when we made a positive change and reshuffled last night - we trounced them. Maybe if we went into games reinforcing the fact that we can and should wipe the floor with teams then from time to time we will.
My suggestion to Brian for the new year would be to lose the negative attitude - lets be positive and think positive. We are better than a lot of teams in this division when we play the way we can play - and not the way we think we need to to grind a result which result in negative performances and invariably negative results.
For anyone who hasnt fallen asleep yet, you might find this article interesting on Jonny Wilkinsons kicking psychology. Interesting stuff, and maybe some stuff we can learn from it.
http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/articles/scni14a7.htm
