Belief

One of the biggest things that I have learnt over the past year, all throughout my life but particularly sport is that you have to be able to believe in yourself. You can achieve amazing things when you actually have faith in yourself. I know it sounds so clichéd, but my biggest learning curve was when I actually accepted that it is true!

The most important belief you can have is self belief! How is anyone else supposed to believe in you if you cannot even believe in yourself? It is a battle but once you get past it, you will be so amazed! One of the hardest things about self belief is getting it. You may always say you can do what you want to, but you actually have to feel it too. And once you feel it, you will begin the struggle to keep belief in yourself. People will come along and try knock it away from you, and try to quash your self belief because they don’t have any, but you can’t let them have it! 

You will also gain more confidence if you are able to gain the belief of those around you, your teammates, coaches and support staff. When they trust you to take on anything, you know that if you are not up to the challenge, they will be there to have your back. However, this is not always necessary. Sometimes when people don’t believe in you it can become easier to achieve what you want to. I find that if I am told I won’t be able to do something it makes me want it that much more!

Another key thing to self belief is goal setting. As I have already mentioned in one of my other blogs, it is important that you are able to set realistic measureable goals in order to gain your self confidence. If you set goals that are too high you will continue to fail and become down on yourself, and if you set goals that you can’t measure then you will never feel like you get anywhere. The biggest thing that taught me self belief was hard work! Although not the most talented, I always knew I could do what I wanted, but when I started putting in the hard yards I began to gain what I had always wanted.

 

I want to end by saying I have had a wonderful semester, and creating these blogs has helped me to express who I am and what I believe in. I will leave with a quote that Keith said to me that I will never forget:

“Give yourself permission to succeed! “

Superstitions

I have a large number of pre-game superstitions, and I know in my head that it doesn’t matter what colour apple I eat for breakfast the morning before a game, but I just can’t help but have to stick to it each week. People I know think I am completely crazy for the things I do before a game, but all of these small things help to relax me and help me to prepare myself for the game. The role that superstitions play is up to the individual. Some people have none at all, and just do whatever they need to do before a game, others have a few to help them prepare, and then there are people like me that have all the stupid ones under the sun. As I spoke about in a previous week, some athletes require a routine to help them and relax into a game. I am one of those people. The first of my annoying pre-game rituals is that I need to have a red powerade the night before a game, and a blue powerade and a long black before the game. I feel as though I have to eat my cereal out of a Tupperware container, I can only eat a green apple the day of a game, and I like to have a fresh coat of paint on my nails the night before. If that wasn’t enough, I need to strap my own ankle, but get the trainer to strap my thumb, and I cannot put my socks and boots on before my strapping is completely finished. Oh, and I always put my left sock and boot on first. Crazy I know, but having routines like these help me to be able to mentally prepare myself long before I start preparing my body.

When you are coaching athletes that have habits like these, you do not need to encourage or discourage them. The athletes can decide this for themselves whether it is worthwhile continuing or not. The only time you should step in is if it becomes far too hard to manage. If the person cannot go to the same newsagency for their morning paper for example, and they begin to freak out, that is when you know it has gotten out of hand.

But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a red apple the night before a game ;)

Cultural Values / ANZAC Day

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the ANZAC Day AFL match between Collingwood and Essendon. Being a St Kilda supporter, I didn’t want to miss out on the fun, so I donned my brothers Essendon Jersey and scarf and headed off to the MCG. The atmosphere was incredible! To have 90 000 + people all packed into a stadium and still not a sound during the last post was amazing! Not to mention the level of the game! Both teams fought all day and did not give up, something you would expect from an ANZAC solider. There are so many comparisons between football and war, and far too many quotes to even think about putting in here, but it got me thinking that even though sometimes we get sick of these old cliques, they are so relevant and so true!

The main value that transfers is camaraderie!  Each solider at war fought and fought for our country, just as these AFL players fight and fight for each other. Sure, it might not be to the same extent, but these football players go out there and put their body on the line for their teammates and they keep watch over them and give everything that they have on that field, just to make their teammates and their supporters proud!

There is also great sportsmanship shown by these athletes. Just as our ANZACS did, the football players show enormous respect for their opponents, and try to focus on winning the game, rather than beating the other team. Even the crowd seemed more subdued than a normal AFL match, yes there were fanatics cheering on their team but there was no one yelling abuse over the fence. The crowd just seemed to have a different feel to it, like they all appreciated what the ANZACS did and now what the AFL players represent.

Emotional Attachment to Sport

Last week I was lucky enough to see St Kilda up close and personal twice in Canberra. On Friday I headed down to their open training and hung around and met all the players, and then on Saturday I went to the match and then hung around again and met them all again. After both occasions I could not wipe the smile off my face! And it got me thinking, we place so much emotional attachment on sport! Being able to meet the players, and being lucky enough to do it twice, was honestly something that I had wanted to do since I was a little girl, and I was definitely behaving like the child within me!

So what does sport provide for us emotionally? It can be much more than a hobby, game after game, season after season, year after year, we follow these teams and watch them play, train, and off field. It also provides us with a connection to those around us. My whole family, aside from me, support Essendon, and we will all often watch it together as a family activity. Not only that but weekly calls to speak about upcoming games, previous games, and players injuries give us another reason to connect to the ones around us. Sport can also be a very powerful social tool! The amount of friends that you can make through playing and watching sport is amazing! I have met some incredible people through joining the Hawks, and wouldn’t have been given that chance without sport.

Emotion is also a very powerful marketing tool. Through emotion, sporting companies can get us to buy almost anything! And they can put a large price tag on it too!

It also provides a good base of drive and motivation for athletes. If you ask an athlete why they play the sport they play, it will more often than not be at least partly an emotional reason. For example, I love football and I am keen to improve my skills all the time, but the reason I play is for the friends that I have met and the love that I have for football. If you ask them why they want to achieve what they set out to do, it will also have a very emotional attachment to it. Some may give the reason “Oh I just love being out and running around”, but If it was just the running they wouldn’t pay hundreds of dollars in fees to just run.

Having this connection is so important, and can be so amazing!! I cannot imagine not supporting an AFL team as crazily as I do!

The Role of Music

For some athletes, music can play a massive part in optimal performance, but for others it can have no impact at all. I am one of those players that believe heavily in the use of it, and it can change my mood before or after a match. The first thing that music helps with for me is arousal levels before a game. As the inverted U model is heavily dependent on the individual, listening to music before a game can greatly help me to get into the optimal zone for performance. Others I know like to sit quietly before a game, and some just bounce around the walls of the change room.

I also find that music is a massive relaxation tool for me before a game. It helps me to settle my nerves and to get right into the zone before a game. Having a set playlist means that I have tailored my music to progress through the stages of my pre game routines. At the start of my playlist I have very energetic music that can get me up and going. After a while, the music gets slower and allows me to calm, slow my heart rate and to gather my thoughts about the game ahead. It then picks up the pace again and gets me fired up to go out there and do the best that I can.

Having music before a game, particularly a playlist or the same songs, means that you can get into a routine and this also acts as a calmative. The best way to introduce this in a team situation however, is through individual music players and headphones. As all players might not support the use of music, or the style of music, this is the most safe option.

Certain songs can also evoke certain memories. If you teach yourself to do something and link it to music, every time you hear that song, you will be reminded of what you have learnt. Music can also aid with forms of mental imagery, another technique becoming more and more popular for athletes. I have certain songs that whenever I hear them, regardless of where I am or what I am doing, I immediately think of football. There are even 3 certain songs that can make me nervous when I hear them just because they remind me of big games!

Other Generations Sport

I often think about the role that sport plays in our lives, and where it fits in with the rest of our busy schedules. I know it can be very different for each person, but I believe that in general we do not spend enough time playing it. If we can fit an hour into our day to surf the net or to watch television, why can’t we find time to go out and run around. I don’t blame technology, because the technological advances we have had are very important and make things so much easier, but we need to find an even balance. My parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents always speak about how they used to be out and in the street playing cricket and football with their siblings and neighbours. I would love to be able to spend all my time out in the street kicking the footy with my brothers, but the few times we get to often do not last for long, and the dirty looks we get from people driving past are enough to put you off it.

We have also seen an increase in sport technology, but why have we don’t this? Every supplement that we take, or up to date, latest design sports equipment that we use, is it to optimise our performance so that we can get better or is it because we are lazy and don’t want to spend hours out on the paddock training for things? Sure, we may call it efficiency, but wouldn’t the research and breakthrough’s be better off in another area of life, such as health research?

Athletes are becoming faster, stronger, better, but what do we owe our generations for that? Everything has slowly been changing, from shoes to outfits, surfaces to arenas, and sporting equipment to the latest technology, all of these things make us break records from previous years, but can we really compare ourselves to athletes of the previous generation or the generation before that?

Gym Culture

We all have a desire to be skinny and have a ripped body, but how much does this impact on our lives? And what effect do digital effects have on our mindset?

It is vital that athletes spend a large portion of their time ensuring that their body is in prime condition for their sport, but at what stage does the gym culture take over? Professional sporting organisations very often have gyms at their training facilities, and the athletes use these for an hour or so a day. The sporting organisations employ strength and conditioning coaches to help the athletes to ensure that their body is primed for their sport. But it is the semi-professional and amateur athletes that have the most trouble with body image. They participate in their sport, and on the side they head to the gym to get ‘big’. They get caught up in the gym culture of society, and focus on getting stronger. But when these athletes go to the gym, they rarely go for the purpose of developing their sport, they go for looks.

If athletes can’t have confidence in themselves and their image, what message does that portray to those that look up to them? As I mentioned last week about Idols, people hang off everything that their idols do and say. Whilst this can be positive, it can also be very negative. Children these days need to be taught that body image is not important. They should just be out running around with their friends rather than worrying about how they look. When they see athletes being photo shopped in magazines, and worrying about their body image, these children are of course going to become conscious about their own bodies. This should not be happening. Children should be taught that nutrition is vital, and any other resistance training and cardio training should be done to ensure better performance in sport rather than aesthetics.