Prime Sport Alert!
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Welcome to Prime Sport Alert! This bimonthly e-newsletter examines essential issues for athletes and coaches, regardless of your sport, level of ability, or goals. Prime Sport Alert! explores the psychological and team contributors to success in today's highly competitive and demanding sports world. The goal of Prime Sport Alert! is to provide you with the deep insights, useful information, and practical tools you need to perform at your highest level consistently and achieve your goals. Prime Sport Alert! is adopted from Dr. Taylor's Prime Sport book series (learn more) and drawn directly from his more than 22 years of work with professional, Olympic, collegiate, junior-elite, and age-group athletes and coaches in many sports, including tennis, golf, soccer, football, basketball, baseball, triathlon, running, swimming, cycling, ski racing, sailing, equestrian, lacrosse, squash, and fencing (learn more). To sign up for Prime Sport Alert!, click here and type 'Subscribe to Prime Sport Alert!' in the Subject line. Your email address will be added to the newsletter mailing list. If, at any time, you would prefer to "opt out" of Prime Sport Alert!, click here and type 'REMOVE from Prime Sport Alert!' in the Subject line. Would you like to have Dr. Taylor consult with or speak to you, your junior athlete, or your team? Email him at
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.Jan., 2008: Intro. to Prime Sport |
March, 2008: Foundation of Prime Sport |
Introduction to Prime Sport Alert!
January, 2008
When you compete in your sport, you will, in fact, be competing in two competitions. The obvious competition is the one that occurs against your opponent. The more important competition, though, is the mental game that you play inside your head against yourself. Here is a simple reality: If you don’t win the mental game, you won’t win the competitive game.
Contrary to what you may think, at whatever level in which you’re competing, the technical and physical aspects of your sport don’t usually determine the winner. Athletes who compete at the same level are very similar technically and physically. For example, is Tiger Woods better technically than Phil Mickelson? Is Roger Federer in better physical condition than Rafael Nadal? In both cases, the answer is no. So, on any given day, what separates Justine Henin from Venus Williams, Tom Brady from Peyton Manning? The answer lies in who wins the mental game.
Whenever I talk to athletes, I ask them what aspect of their sport seems to have the greatest impact on how they perform. Almost unanimously they say the mental part. I then ask how much time they devote to their mental preparation and their answer is almost always little or no time.
Despite its obvious importance, the mental side of sport is most often neglected, at least until a problem arises. The mistake athletes make is that they don’t treat their mental game the way they treat the physical and technical aspects of their sport. You don’t wait to get injured before you do physical conditioning, do you?. You don’t develop a technical flaw before you work on your technique, do you? Of course not. You do physical and technical training to prevent problems from arising. You should approach the mental game in the same way.
What is Prime Sport?
One of the most popular phrases in sport psychology is peak performance. Athletes typically think of peak performance as performing their best, as being at the top of their game. That sounds good, doesn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to achieve peak performance? And when I came out of graduate school, peak performance was what I wanted athletes to achieve.
But as I became more experienced as a consultant and a writer, I began to appreciate the power of words and how important it is that the words I use are highly descriptive of what I want to communicate. I decided that peak performances was not descriptive. I saw several problems with peak performance:
- A peak is very small, so you can't stay there long. Would you be satisfied if you had one good competition and several poor ones?
- Once the peak is reached, there's only one way to go—down!—and, and as with most peaks, the drop is usually precipitous. Have you experienced those big swings in performance, where one week you’re totally “on your game” and the next you’re completely off it?
- You may arrive at the peak too early or too late, missing an opportunity for success. Have you felt the frustration of lost opportunity because you weren’t on your game when you needed to be?
So I needed a phrase that accurately described what I wanted athletes to achieve. I struggled for several years unable to find such a phrase until one day I had one of those rare meetings of readiness and luck. Walking through the meat section of a supermarket I saw a piece of beef with a sticker that read Prime Cut. I had an “aha” experience; I knew I was on to something. I returned to my office and looked up “prime” in the dictionary. It was defined as “of the highest quality or value.” I had finally found the phrase, “Prime Performance,” which I believed was highly descriptive of what I wanted athletes to achieve.
I define Prime Performance, or in this case, Prime Sport, as “performing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions.” There are two essential words in this definition. First, “consistently.” I’m not interested if you can have only one or two great performances and then some poor ones; that is not enough to be truly successful. I want you to be able to train and compete at a high level day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, all season long. This means performing with minimal ups and downs instead of the large swings in performance that are so common among athletes. Second, “challenging.” I’m not impressed if you can perform well under ideal conditions against an easy opponent when you’re on top of their game. Anyone can do that. What makes the great athletes great is their ability to perform their best under the worst possible conditions against a tough opponent when they’re not on their game.
Where Does Prime Sport Come From?
Though I’ll be focusing on its mental contributors in Prime Sport Alert!, the mind is only one necessary part of Prime Sport. You must also be at a high level of physical health including being well-conditioned, well-rested, eating a balanced diet, and free from injury and illness. Prime Sport also isn’t possible if you’re not technically and tactically sound. If you’re physically, technically, tactically, and mentally prepared, then you will have the ability to achieve Prime Sport.
Experiencing Prime Sport
Now here’s a question for you: Have you ever experienced Prime Sport? Let me describe what it’s like:
- Effortless: It’s comfortable, easy, and natural.
- Automatic: The body does what it knows how to do and there’s no mental interference.
- Sharpened Senses: seeing, hearing, and feeling everything more acutely than normal.
- Time shift: Everything slows down enabling you to react more quickly.
- Effortless focus: You’re totally absorbed in the experience.
- Boundless energy: Fatigue is simply not an issue.
- Prime integration: The physical, technical, tactical, and mental are working together to perform your best.
Prime Sport Alert! is Born
The bi-monthly Prime Sport Alert! e-newsletter was created to assist you in experiencing Prime Sport, ensuring that mentally you are your best ally rather than your worst enemy. Prime Sport Alert! will focus on the essentials of the mental game and give you the mental skills you need to achieve your goals.
The information and tools I will share with you in Prime Sport Alert! is not magic dust and will not produce miracles. You would not expect increases in strength by lifting weights a few times or an improvement in technique by working on it every once in a while. The only way to improve any area, whether physical, technical, or mental, is through commitment, hard work, and patience.
The information, techniques, and exercises in Prime Sport Alert! are designed to be “user-friendly;” easy to understand and apply directly to your sport. My goal is for you to read Prime Sport Alert! and go out tomorrow and use it immediately to improve your sports performance.
Prime Sport Alert! has several goals:
- Provide clear and understandable information about winning the mental game of sport.
- Offer simple and practical techniques that you can easily use to raise your performances to a new level.
- Enable you to perform your best in your sport consistently when it really counts.
Prime Sport Alert! for all Sports
Prime Sport Alert! is written to benefit to athletes in all sports and at all levels of ability. Whether you are 18 years old or 45 years old, compete in individual or team sports, or a novice or a professional, the information and tools provided by Prime Sport Alert! can be applied to any sport setting.
A goal of writing Prime Sport Alert! is to use a language that all athletes can relate to and that you can easily translate into the specific vocabulary of your sport. A difficulty with this process is that sports do not always share a common language. For example, athletes in some sports, such as football, baseball, and tennis, “play” their sport, while others, such as figure skating, gymnastics, and track and field, “perform” in their sport. Similarly, some sports, such as soccer and baseball, compete in “games,” while other sports, such as swimming and cycling, compete in “races,” “meets,” or “events.” To simplify communicating my ideas in Prime Sport Alert!, I will maintain a consistency of language by using “perform” and “competition” to describe athletes’ participating in their sport. I’m confident that you will have little difficulty applying my ideas to the sport in which you participate.
Prime Sport Alert! will show you the way to reaching your athletic goals. Now let’s begin the exciting journey that culminates in your achieving Prime Sport.
Foundation of Prime Sport
March, 2008
Before you can begin the process of developing Prime Sport, you need to create a foundation of beliefs about your sport on which you can build your mental skills. This foundation involves your attitudes in two areas. First, your perspective on competition; what you think of it, how you feel about it, and how you approach it. Second, your attitude toward success and failure; how you define success and failure, and whether you know the essential roles that both success and failure play in becoming the best athlete you can be. Clarifying your views in these areas will make it easier to win the mental game and to achieve Prime Sport.
Perspective on Competition
Sports are obviously important to you. You put a great deal of effort into your sports participation. Because of this, you put your ego on the line every time you perform. When you don’t perform well, you’re disappointed. This may not feel good, but it’s natural because it means you care about your sport.
There is, however, a point at which you can lose perspective and your feelings toward your sport can hurt your performances. The key red flag is what I call the “too zone.” You want to care about your participation in your sport, but you don’t wan to care too much. You want your performances to be important to you, but not too important, You want to try hard to achieve your goals, but you don’t want to try too hard.
In the “too zone,” your self-esteem is overly connected to your involvement and results in your sport, when how you feel about yourself as a person is too influenced by how you perform. If you find yourself feeling this way, you have lost perspective on the role that sports play in your life. You should reevaluate what your sports participation means to you and how it impacts your life and your well being. You will probably find that it plays too big a role in how you feel about yourself. When this happens, you not only perform poorly (because you feel far too much pressure), but you may find that your sport is no longer fun for you.
The Prime Sport view of competition means keeping your sport in perspective. To perform your best and to have fun, you need to keep your sports participation in a healthy place in your life. It may be important to you, but it should not be life or death. Sports should be a part of your life, not life itself. Remember why you participate: it’s fun, you like the exercise, it’s a great way to socialize, it feels great to master a sport, and, yes, you like to compete and succeed. If you have fun, work hard, enjoy the process of your sport, and do not care too much about success and failure, you will enjoy the competition more, you will perform better, and you will be more likely to achieve your goals as well.
Ups and Downs of Sport
To achieve Prime Sport, you must also recognize and accept the ups and downs of sport. In the history of sport, very few athletes have had perfect or near-perfect seasons: Wayne Gretzky, Steffi Graf, Michael Jordan, Nancy Lopez, Tiger Woods. Even the best athletes have ups and downs. Since they do, then you should expect to have them as well. It’s not whether you have ups and downs in your sport, but how big the ups and downs are and how you respond to them. In fact, Prime Sport Alert! is devoted to assisting you in minimizing the ups and downs of sport.
In a down period, it’s easy to get frustrated, angry, and depressed. You can feel really disappointed in how you’re performing and can feel helpless to change it. You may want to just give up. But none of these feelings will help you accomplish your important goals: getting out of the down period and returning to a high level of performance. This is a skill that separates the great athletes from the good ones. The best athletes know how to get back to an up period quickly.
How do they do this? First, they keep the down period in perspective, knowing that it’s a natural and expected part of sports. This attitude takes the pressure off them to rush back to a higher level of performance and keeps them from getting too upset. It also enables them to stay positive and motivated. Most important, they never give up. They keep working hard, no matter how bad it gets. Great athletes look for the cause of their slump and then find a solution. If you maintain this attitude toward the ups and downs of sport, your down periods won’t last as long and you’ll more quickly swing back to an up period.
Love and Fun
It’s easy to lose sight of why you compete in sports. There is the competition, awards, rankings, and attention. Yet, when you get focused on the external benefits of sport, you may lose sight of the internal reasons why you compete. You may not have as much fun and you won’t perform as well either. When this happens, you need to remind yourself of what sport is all about. Sports participation should be about two things. First, about love: love of the sport, love of others, and love of yourself. If you love your sport, you have a chance to achieve Prime Sport.
Second, sports should be about fun. Working hard, improving your performance, the intensity of competition, and enjoying the process—win or lose—should all be fun. If you always remember that sports are about love and fun, then you will enjoy participating and you will perform your best.
Success and Failure
Related to your attitude toward competition is your approach to success and failure. How you define success and failure, and your perceptions of the roles that success and failure play in developing Prime Sport, will determine your ability to perform your best consistently. Your attitude toward success and failure will either promote or interfere with achieving your goals.
Too often, success and failure are defined narrowly as winning and losing. The athlete who wins the competition is successful and everyone else has failed. But how many times have you performed well, yet lost. The fact is you can’t usually control whether you win or lose. What you can control is the effort you put in and how well you perform. It’s fruitless to strive for something that’s out of your control, so success and failure should be defined in terms of things over which you have control. With this in mind, I define success as giving your best effort and performing to the best of your ability. I define failure as not trying your hardest and not performing as well as you can. The nice thing about this definition is that it’s within your control, you’ll feel less pressure, you’ll perform better, and as a result, you’ll be more likely to achieve your goals and enjoy the experience.
There are many misconceptions that athletes hold about success and failure. Many athletes believe that the only way to win is to have always won; that winners rarely lose and losers always lose. The reality is that successful athletes lose more often than losers. Losers lose a few times and quit. Successful athletes lose at first, learn from the losses, then begin to win because of what they’ve learned.
Both success and failure are essential to achieving Prime Sport. Success builds confidence and reinforces your belief that you can perform well and meet the challenges of competition. There are, however, problems with too much success too early. Success can breed complacency because, if you succeed all of the time, there’s little motivation to improve. Sooner or later though, as you move up the competitive ladder, you’ll come up against someone who is just as good or better than you, and since you haven’t been motivated to improve, you won’t be as successful. Success also doesn’t identify areas in need of improvement. If you always succeed, your weaknesses won’t become apparent and you won’t see the need to work on your performance. Success also doesn’t teach you how to constructively handle the inevitable obstacles and setbacks of sport. You may become so accustomed to success that when you finally do fail, it will be a shock to you.
There are also benefits to failing that will ultimately enable you to succeed more. Failure provides you with information about your progress. It shows you what you’re doing well and, more importantly, what you need to improve on. Failure shows you what doesn’t work, which helps you identify what works best. Failure also teaches you how to positively handle adversity, persevere in the face of setbacks, and be patient in your athletic development. Rather than becoming discouraged by failure, you should focus on how it will help you become a better athlete. If you learn the valuable lessons from both success and failure, you’ll gain the perspective toward your sport that will allow you to achieve Prime Sport.
Prime Sport Pyramid
May, 2008
As I discussed in the January, 2008 issue of Prime Sport Alert!, Prime Sport is defined as “performing at a consistently high level under the most challenging conditions.” Prime Sport is a goal toward which everyone in the sports world strives, the result of which is to maximize your athletic efforts and enable you to achieve your athletic goals. But few athletes, coaches, or teams understand fully the information and strategies they must use to achieve their goals. Nor do many have a framework or a process for working toward Prime Sport. And even fewer have implemented such important changes.
Prime Sport Pyramid
The Prime Sport Pyramid provides both a framework and a process for identifying and developing the key contributors to individual and team sports performance. The Prime Sport Pyramid is comprised of five psychological factors that most directly impact athletic performance (see pyramid at right). These factors can either facilitate or interfere with performance. Your goal is to understand your relationship with each of these factors and develop strategies and a plan of action for alleviating your psychological weaknesses and building on the psychological strengths.
The Prime Sport Pyramid is ordered in a purposeful and logical manner. Its order is based on the sequence in which the factors impact sports performance. The first two factors (motivation and confidence) prepare you for competition, while the next three (stress, focus, and emotions) directly impacts training and competitive performance.
Motivation. At the foundation of the Prime Sport Pyramid lies motivation, because without the determination and drive to take action in pursuit of your goals, all efforts would stop and any other contributors to performance, whether physical, technical, equipment, or team, would be moot. Motivation ensures that you do everything you can to be totally prepared to achieve your goals. Essential to developing motivation is understanding what motivates you and how you can continue to work hard in the face of fatigue, pain, setbacks, and frustration.
Confidence. There is no more important mental factor than confidence because you might have all ability in the world to achieve your goals, but if you don’t have confidence in that ability, you won’t use that ability. Many athletes defeat themselves even before the competition begins with doubts and negative self-talk. Like all mental skills, confidence is a skill that develops with practice. A deep faith in your capabilities comes from total preparation, exposure to adversity, support from others, and training and competitive success.
Intensity. Intensity may be the most important contributor to sports performance once the competition begins. It’s so important because all of the motivation, confidence, focus, and emotions in the world won’t help you if your body is not physiologically capable of doing what it needs to do for you to perform your best. Intensity involves the amount of physiological activation you feel before and during training and competition and lies on a continuum between sleep (very low intensity) to terror (very high intensity). Somewhere between those two extremes you perform your best and your challenge is to find the ideal level of intensity that works best for you in your sport.
Focus. Focus involves the ability to concentrate on those things that help you perform your best, shift focus when the demands of the situation change, and avoid distractions that are ever present in athletic arena. The ability to focus effectively is especially important in technically complex sports or those that last a long time, and when there are considerable expectations and pressure.
Emotions. Sports can evoke a wide range of emotions, from inspiration, pride, exhilaration, and satisfaction, to fear, frustration, anger, and despair. Emotions lie at the top of the Prime Sport Pyramid because I have found that they are the ultimate determinant of your ability to perform consistently under the most challenging conditions. Emotions also contribute significantly to your abilities as a leader and a team member. Most powerfully, emotional mastery gives you the power to use emotions as tools to facilitate individual and team performance rather than weapons that hurt you and others.
Developing Prime Sport
The Prime Sport Pyramid gives you the framework from which to explore the psychological factors that most impact your athletic life. It should now act as the foundation for the process of improvement that will allow you to maximize your training and competitive performances and achieve your goals.
Prime Sport Alert! was created to assist you in just this process, ensuring that mentally you are your best ally rather than your worst enemy. Prime Sport Alert! will examine in depth these factors and offer you practical information and useful mental skills that you can use the next time you train or compete.
It’s important to note that Prime Sport is not magic dust and will not produce miracles. You would not expect increases in strength by lifting weights a few times or an improvement in technique by working on it for a few hours. The only way to improve any area, whether physical, technical, or mental, is through commitment, hard work, and patience. If you make the same commitment to your mental training as you do to your physical and technical training, Prime Sport will play a key role in helping you achieve your athletic goals.
Prime Sport Profiling
July, 2008
Now that you have an understanding of Prime Sport from my previous issues of Prime Sport Alert! (if you missed them, click here), you can begin the process of achieving it. The first step involves gaining a better understanding of yourself as an athlete. This self-understanding then results in greater improvement and better performance. Becoming the best athlete you can is complicated. You probably have a busy life filled with sports, school, work, family, social life, and other activities. It’s difficult to find time to do everything. By understanding yourself, you’ll know what you need to work on to be efficient and focused in your efforts.
In developing greater self-understanding, you must recognize your strengths and weaknesses. Most athletes love to focus on their strengths, but don’t like to admit that they have weaknesses. This attitude will limit your development. Most athletes think that they’re as good as their greatest strengths. For example, a tennis player believes that his power and height advantage will enable him to win and that his lack of quickness and consistency won’t hurt him. The truth is, however, that you are only as good as your biggest weakness. Returning to that example, if the player’s opponent is fast and a good counterpuncher, his power and height can be neutralized and his lack of speed and consistency may determine the outcome of the match-up.
Think of athletic strengths and weaknesses as a mathematical equation. On a scale of 1-10 where a 1 is very poor and 10 is the best, if a basketball player is a good shooter (8), but a poor defender (2), her over-all performance would be moderate (8+2=10). If she focused on and improved her shooting (from 8 to 9), she wouldn’t improve that much over all because, already a capable shooter, there isn’t much room for improvement (9+2=11). But if she improved your defense (from 2 to 7), then her overall performance would rise significantly (8+7=15). Of course, you want to continue to build your strengths, but the more you improve your weaknesses, the higher your over-all performances and the more successful you will be.
Why Prime Sport Profiling?
A difficulty with dealing with the mental aspects of sport is that they’re not tangible or easily measured. If you want to learn what are your physical strengths and weaknesses, you can go through a physical-testing program that gives you objective data about your physical condition. Think of Prime Sport profiling as physical testing for the mind. It makes mental issues related to your sport more concrete.
It’s important for you to have an open mind with Prime Sport profiling. Rather than being uncomfortable with facing your weaknesses, you should be willing to consider the information in a positive and constructive way. When weaknesses are identified, it doesn’t mean that you’re incapable of performing well. It may be that you haven’t had to use these skills at your current level or you’ve been able to hide them with the strengths you have. But the information you gain from Prime Sport profiling will enable you to improve and you’ll have a better chance of achieving your goals.
“As you grow up, you learn more about yourself, I tried to…learn about myself and my weaknesses and strengths.”
Olympic skiing champion Lasse Kjus
Completing the Prime Sport Profile
The Prime Sport profile is comprised of 12 mental, emotional, and competitive factors that impact sports performance. To complete the Prime Sport profile, read the description of each factor and rate yourself on a 1-10 scale, then follow the instructions for evaluating your score and developing an action plan to build your strengths and alleviate your weaknesses.
Motivation - How determined you are to train and compete to achieve your athletic goals. (1-not at all; 10-very)
Confidence - How strongly you believe in your ability to achieve your athletic goals. (1-not at all confident; 10-totally confident)
Intensity - Whether your physical intensity helps or hurts your competitive performances. (1-hurts, too anxious or too relaxed; 10-helps, just right)
Focus - How well you’re able to stay focused on performing your best and avoid distractions. (1-distracted; 10-focused)
Emotions - Whether you have control over your emotions and they help you perform well or you lose control of your emotions and they hurt your competitive performances. (1-lose control, hurt; 10-have control, help)
Consistency - How well you’re able to consistently maintain a high level of performance during competitions. (1-not at all inconsistent; 10-very consistent)
Routines - How much you use routines in your preparations including in training, and before and during competitions. (1-never; 10-often)
Competitor - How you perform in competitions as compared to training. (1-much worse; 10-much better)
Adversity - How you respond to difficult conditions you’re faced with during competitions. (1-poorly; 10-well)
Pressure - How you perform in difficult competitive situations, such as when you are behind. (1-poorly; 10-well)
Ally - Whether you are your best ally or your worst enemy during a competitions. (1-enemy; 10-ally)
Prime Sport - How often you achieve and maintain your highest level of competitive performance. (1-never; 1- often)
Using Your Prime Sport Profile
Having completed the Prime Sport profile, you now have a clear picture of what you believe to be the mental strengths and weaknesses in your sport. Typically, a score below a 8 indicates an area on which you need to work. Place a √ next to each factor that you scored as less than a 8. These are the factors that you’ll want to consider working on in your Prime Sport program.
From those checked factors, select three to focus on in the immediate future. It doesn’t make sense to deal with every one that you need to strengthen. You’ll just become overloaded and won’t give adequate attention to any of them. It’s best to focus on a few, strengthen them, then move on to others.
The question is, if you have more than three factors on which you need to work, which ones should you choose? The decision should be based on several concerns. First, you should look at which ones are most important for your long-term development. Just like working on the physical and technical aspects of your sport, you should focus on the factors that will help you in the long run. Second, some weaknesses are symptoms of other weaknesses. By dealing with one factor, another one can be relieved without having to work on it directly. For example, you may not handle pressure well because you lack confidence. By building your confidence, you also improve your ability to handle pressure. Third, you need to balance your immediate training and competitive needs with your long-term development. You may have an important competition coming up for which you need to be ready. For example, you may decide that you need to improve your focus and intensity immediately even though working on your motivation and confidence will be more important in the future.
On a blank sheet of paper, indicate the three mental factors you want to focus on in the near future. By reading one of my Prime Sport book series (general sport, tennis, golf, ski racing, learn more), another of the many excellent sport-psychology books that are available, or the articles available free of cost on my Web site (learn more), you can learn about techniques and exercises that will help you strengthen the areas you’ve selected. By setting goals for the areas you want to improve on and developing an action plan of how to achieve those goals, you can systematically develop the areas you’ve identified in your Prime Sport profile.
You can also use Prime Sport Profiling to measure progress in your training. Periodically, perhaps every few months, complete the profile and compare it with your past profiles. You should see improvement in the areas on which you’ve worked. Also, ask your coaches about positive changes they’ve seen in those areas. When your ratings move to an 8 or above, select other factors to work on and follow the same procedure.
“A part of greatness is learning to correct your weaknesses. The first thing is to know your faults and then take on a systematic plan of correcting them.”
Babe Ruth
